Escaping Phyrexia
by Delusional Fishies
Summary: You're just some nobody. But now you're a Planeswalker. Did you think life would be better after this? Don't be silly, foolish girl.
1. a girl becomes a planeswalker

So I died.

That's how the story starts, anyway.

It wasn't a noble death; I didn't dive in front of a speeding vehicle to save someone. I didn't take a bullet for somebody special. It was a stupid, stupid death. It was…

Well, let's back up for a moment, alright?

It isn't that I'm going to bare my whole life to you, but maybe a short summary could help? Maybe not, but really, you're reading, so you might as well get to know me a little. I read somewhere that someone once said "in my 800 years, I've never met anyone not special" or something to that effect. I'm not sure if it's because I'm about to die, but these random things just pop to the fore of my mind.

It's rather silly of me, right? Well, I'm nothing special. I don't have perfect memory, or whatever that term is called. I don't have any special skills that let me stand out from the rest. I'd like to think of myself as a special and unique snowflake, maybe, but right now, as I lay dying, I can only think that a majority of the people I've met in my short lifetime were like me, normal, nothing-special people.

I guess I do have a few skills, I've stuck around to pick up a plethora of knowledge in the few institutions that I have spent time at, but even then, I don't have anything special. You could say I'm a Jack of Many Trades. But really, it doesn't matter. Because I'm dead.

My forefinger still twitched, once in a few seconds, but my vision was already dimming_. It was a stupid death_, I thought to myself again. Indeed it was; who dies from something as stupid as a dropped piano? It wasn't even a grand piano; the thing is definitely electric. There were some people looking down from a balcony, some stories up, ten stories maybe? Was it twenty? My glasses fell off on the initial collision. I couldn't tell; I had no depth perception without my glasses.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid…_ I really didn't want my last thought to be me lamenting how China didn't have any safety standards towards this sort of thing, or that the Chinese bystanders were just watching, not a single one calling an ambulance in fear of having to share the bill or something equally stupid. _Stupid… why did I think it was a good idea to study in this place?_

_Ah, well… at least the pain will stop…_

I closed my eyes, expecting the pain to fade, if slowly.

… In a way, it did. The pain disappeared. I must have blacked out, because I felt parched and my throat was achingly dry. It didn't hit me immediately, but I realized I wasn't dead. The first thing I found strange was that I was lying on something unbelievably fluffy.

I have been in the hospital before, several times in fact. When I was young, I had to stay, a few times, in the hospital because of my weak constitution and an assortment of problems that sprung from there. Every time I had been in a hospital, especially those in the land of China, it was an uncomfortable mess that I would not want anyone to suffer, if there was an alternative.

I blinked. Strange, but not unwelcome, was that there were no rheum in the corners of my eyes. Normally, there was at least… something there. I reached up instinctively to rub my eyes nevertheless; it was a bad habit of mine that caused me a bit of a pink eye at times.

A soft, slender hand touched my wrist, and pushed me down. Those fingers felt more delicate than porcelain, and I hesitated for a moment to look up.

You know how in films, there is an excess of tricks of the light, make-up, and digital editing that cause movie stars to take on an otherworldly beauty? I think I lost my breath just then. I felt myself swallow audibly, but _goddamn. Am I dreaming? Am I dead?_

Looking around, I thought I was probably dead.

There was a perpetual sunset in the horizon, painting a canvas of red and gold, with extravagant, purple hues. Clouds seemed to be everywhere, but never a dark corner. In fact, I felt like I was sitting on a cloud, if not for the beautifully gothic architecture and furniture that surrounded me. Most of it was created from an expensive set of light woods and marbles, with inlaid gold and silvers. There was something fuzzy about this whole environment that I stopped breathing for a moment. My eyes stretched to their limit to take in all this, and yet as awed as I was by my surroundings, it was the woman holding my hand, entwining her thin fingers in mine that I thought was most pretty.

"You aren't real, are you?" I whispered. Of course this had to be a dream, I wasn't even a firm believer of this sort of Christian heaven. "Pinch me."

She frowned down at me, looking concerned. But instead of responding, she placed an intricate glass in my hand and spoke, "Drink."

It sounded like a request, but my body obeyed.

"You have many questions, I'm sure," she smiled down at me, petting my hair as if I were a 6 year old girl again. Maybe I was, if she were an angel or something. Surely the long-lived would seem me like that, but I was still convinced this was an illusion in my head. "I will answer them, if you wish. And you are hurt, so I shall offer you my hospitality too."

"Um. That's nice of you." I looked away from her eyes. I had a hair-raising sense of being dwarfed by a looming presence when I looked directly at her. It was as if she were something much greater. And it frightened me, despite her beauty. "Huh. There's two moons. That's new." And there were floating pieces of land mass outside my window too.

A cool breeze blew in, wrapping the woman's delicate, blonde curls around her neck like a loose noose.

My mouth opened again, but I couldn't think of anything to say. What would you say to an angel? I certainly didn't expect to see one when I died, so I never had any one-liners prepared. If we went by the _Dogma_ version of things, heck, she could even be God. "Who are you?" Let it not be said that I didn't have _anything_ to say though.

She blinked, and smiled again. My heart fluttered and I felt the irritating sense of butterflies rumbling in my belly. I had not felt like this since the end of elementary school. "I am Serra."

"Nice to ah, meet you Serra," Not God then? That's… well, it reaffirms my agnostic or not-really-sure faith a little, if anything. I scratched the back of my head awkwardly, but then I stopped, noticing a lack of any hint of a head wound. "Huh. I don't feel anything back here. Not even a scab," I muttered more to myself than to her, with a growing frown.

"Yes, I didn't think you would like to keep that."

I placed my hand down through a force of will. It was really itchy back there. The implication within her words were clear to me, and perhaps even clearer than they were to her. "So you are an angel," I blurted.

The corners of her eyes crinkled and her laughter filled the air like a set of soft chiming bells. "No, no, I am not an angel," she shook her hair. Her hair waved from side to side. I want to touch it, and run my hand through it, but perhaps it was best not to do that.

"Well, if you aren't an angel," my words and thought process slowed down. My heart beat faster, and so loudly I thought my chest might burst. "Then… what are you, Serra?"

"Your mannerisms are refreshing," She stroked my hair again. Instead of answering my question, she just stroked and stroked, as if I were a tiny, black kitten curled up in her palm. It sent goose bumps down my neck, but I didn't want her to stop. "You are like me, though you are much, much younger. I am what is known to our kind as a 'Planeswalker'." She paused, expecting me to be shocked.

And I was shocked, but for a reason totally different from what she expected.


	2. a girl comes to a realization

"You're shitting me," I fell back on deadpanning when all else failed. In this case, my brain failed.

Serra blinked; this was the first time I have seen her expression giving a hint of being startled. Her brow furrowed slightly before her lip pursed, "I do not understand what you mean, but… have you heard of Planeswalkers before?"

"No! Er, yes, I mean…" I stopped and took a long sip of water. Rather, I tried to hide behind the glass, strictly to give myself time to think. Well, I knew I had to answer somehow. "There are stories about Planeswalkers, where I am from. I'm not sure if they are all true… can you confirm them for me?"

She giggled, "Of course."

"Alright, the first thing is… can you create life?" It was a bit of a doozy really.

Serra nodded at the question, and folded her hands on her lap. I took the time to notice how simple her gown was, it was a simple fabric, colored light blue and white, with some strands of gold in between. "There are many forms of magic that can create life, to my understanding. You don't need to be a Planeswalker to create life."

"Then… well, what's so special about Planeswalkers?" I muttered, before correcting myself. "Outside of that whole… being able to Walk to different Planes thing, you know?" I gestured pathetically, causing the glass to fall out of my hands and onto my lap. "… Oops?"

"Oh, we will have to clean this up," Serra smiled nonchalantly. "But what is special is that we are unique beings, little girl." She cooed at me, as if she were speaking to a child. I supposed, in a way, she was. "It is not our appearances or our abilities that separate us, but what we are fundamentally. There are those who sudden our Spark for eons, but they find little else of our nature. What I know for certain is that as Planeswalkers, you and I are no longer subject to our origins. We may as well not belong to our home planes. Half of us belong in the Aether, and half of us belong in this Materium. It is not a simple experience as some of our younger kin might have you believe."

"I… uh… wow, okay. I'd probably felt better if this water had splashed all over my face instead," I grumbled. So, what? We're some kind of abomination, like one of those Lovecraft monsters, like that one that dreams up Reality? I shivered at the thought.

Serra placed a hand on her lips, "Oh dear. I shall summon someone for clean sheets. We shall need to get you out of that too; wet clothes seldom make decent wear."

All of her words flew over my head. I clutched my arms to myself, curled my legs to my chest and started rocking myself back and forth forcefully. _I should be freaking out right now. _Why wasn't I freaking out right now? _I should be cursing the world, plane, planes, or whatever. Why do I feel so empty? Argh._ A part of me—the wordy and verbose part of my head—reasoned that I was happy with my situation. Why wouldn't I be? Power and the ability to bend reality over onto its knees was just outside the reach of my fingertips, I should be giddy! But… it felt like I was cheated.

After all, wouldn't it be better to be able to do this with knowledge? We bend reality to our whims every day in the world I am from, in perspective of those medieval people. In comparison, being learned is so much better, right…?

On the third tentacle, I knew what was coming. I was a fan enough of this card game to know what was coming, and the looming dread made my teeth gnash together.

I haven't had an anxiety attack in a while now, but I thought this would be a good time to have a go at it.

_Wait a minute…_ A distracting though popped up in my head. I frowned and called out to Serra's retreating figure, which stood at the door to my brightly lit room. "Wait, Serra! How come… how come I can understand you?" I asked lamely.

Serra paused in her words (which I noticed that I couldn't understand), and turned around. "Whatever do you mean?" She asked, tilting her head to a side in puzzlement.

"I mean… you're not speaking English, or Chinese, or Japanese, or any of the other languages I can at least recognize. Heck, the closest I can guess is some kind of Latin or something, but I don't have a clue at that outside of silly Harry Potter spells."

She waited until I stopped rambling before placing a soft finger on my lips. Wow. It was really callused. Why didn't she make her skin softer if she had so much power at her disposal? She grinned from cheek to cheek and pulled back. Raising her hands, multicolored sparkles shot from palm to palm. Serra giggled, "It's Magic." Then she turned around and called out of the door.

I found my arms crossing and my eyes rolling in exasperation, but inside, the empty feeling was replaced by a sort of giddiness I haven't felt since I was nine and first heard of Pokémon. _I gotta get me some of that!_

Two stern-looking older ladies walked in. Neither of them wore anything of value, in fact they looked rather like nuns, except they didn't have a cowl. One of them made a 'tsk' noise under her breath when she saw me, and the other looked down, as if to avoid my glaze somehow. They stripped me of the sleepwear (which seemed rather like a primitive hospital gown) and changed the sheets. The one with the 'evil-eye' looked back at me as she exited, as if scolding me, before leaving. Neither said a word, but I didn't think they even had time to! It all happened so fast. All I really caught was how they bowed to Serra, both upon entering and on exiting. They must have scrapped so low their foreheads touched the ground!

Dazed and bewildered by the strange experience, I turned to Serra.

She must have seen how wide-eyed I was, because she chortled for a second, before placing a hand on my forearm as if to calm me down. "Don't mind the Matrons, dear. They take their duty seriously above all else, which includes humor, I'm sure."

"Huh…" I blinked twice, "Why didn't you just, I don't know, remove the water with magic?"

"And what would be the point of that?" She smiled down at me.

I shrugged, "Well, it'd definitely make things easier, I suppose?" When she didn't answer and only kept staring down at me knowingly, I looked away and continued awkwardly, "Using magic will save time too. They won't have to dry the sheets, and it'll be a lot less hassle… and stuff… I guess…?" I trailed off.

Serra tilted her head to the side again, smiling gently down at me. I felt like a child sitting on her grandmother's lap. It was a bit belittling, but it made me want to shrink into myself. She stroked my hair again and sighed, "I apologize if I seem fascinated with your hair, dear. This is the first time I've seen such straight and dark, naturally occurring strands in a long, long time." She paused and added hastily, "But to your answer, what will you do with the excess time you have gained that way? You lose a lot more if you take such simple tasks and only wave them away. There is a reason for us Planeswalkers to keep ourselves amongst mortals—do you know what it is like, to have such power and allow it to consume you?"

I thought I had some grasp on that, actually, so I jumped to answer, "I think I get it. It grounds us and doesn't make us think we're gods or something, right?"

"But, little one, what is a god then? We have powers of gods, we talk, move and breathe like gods; if we are not gods, then what are we?" She retorted.

I pouted. "Then what's the point of not using magic?"

She smiled sadly and looked away from me, at the ever distant horizon. "Once you have experienced everything that I have, these simple tasks have a charm to their own." She laughed softly, "I am not so young anymore, excuse my behavior. But I assume that you would want to learn from me, O Budding Planeswalker?" She gave me an amused side-ways glance.

"I think you already know the answer to that question," I couldn't help but smile as well, even though I hardly understood what she meant. It was infectious and it would be a long time before I realized the truth in her words.


	3. a girl meets a goddess

Serra used a lot of flowery words, and danced around a lot of subjects. I guess she didn't feel I was ready for power, even though she was more than willing to teach me. Almost everyone in Serra's Realm knew some form of magic however and when she found I couldn't even use the basics of magic to light a candle, I was surprised by her delight.

"You are like a fresh parchment," She clasped her hands together happily.

"Oh," I blinked. "Like that story with the empty cup or something, right?"

She tilted her head to a side. She had been doing this a lot since I had arrived her, I deduced, because that was her way of showing me that she was confused, I think. She tried to smile, but it came off shaky and weak, "A-An empty cup? My strange knowledge, sometimes caused her to recoil and other times caused her to delight, causing her to become rather cautious when speaking with me.

"You know, that one story where the old teacher whacks his student with a bamboo sword, and tells him to stop making assumptions?" I ventured, completely unaware of her temperament at the time.

Serra shook her head slowly.

"Okay, let me think of how it went…" I crossed my legs and frowned. How did it start anyway? I wasn't sure, but I think Jackie Chan films and cartoons rather tainted my perception of ancient Chinese wisdoms, even before I traveled to the place. "So there is an old sage, who has gathered a lifetime of experiences, okay? He is a hermit or something, I'm not quite sure, actually, but that's not the point of the story. A young student sought this hermit out, and get him to agree to teach the young man.

Being the active and energetic boy that he is, on the day of the lesson, the boy starts off by asking the old man, 'Hey, so what am I going to learn first? The swallow tail strike? The energy blade? The…'—"

Serra raise her a palm at me and interrupted, "Excuse me, Little Lady," she had gotten around to calling me this, much to my disgruntlement. I'm not a Chibi-Usa, damn it! "But what is the swallow tail strike, or the energy blade? These sound like rather technical terms."

I shrugged, "They are just names I made up. Think of them as placeholders of highly advanced techniques, equivalent to a power magical spell of enchantment or something, but for swordsmanship, alright?"

"I never knew swordsmanship was so convoluted," Serra muttered as she scowled in confusion.

"Anyway!" I interrupted her thoughts and grabbed her attention again, "At this point, the irate, old man hits the boy on the head with a piece of wood and says, 'How can I fill a cup with tea when it is already full of water? How can I teach a student when he has nothing to learn? Rid yourself of assumptions before I will teach you anything!' I think…"

Serra only blinked as my story ended. It was a short story, but I think she was expecting something longer. After a second, she clapped, "Well, that was enlightening about your culture, Little Lady! But I would like to think that a teacher can also learn from the student, as much as the student can learn from the teacher."

I was going to say something about how we had a saying like that too, but she plowed on without pausing.

"So we shall depart immediately!" She grabbed onto me and dragged me into the air.

Have you tried to fly before? No? Of course not, you're human, like I was. Yes, like I _was_. But I still thought of myself as a human then. I certainly didn't act like Serra. So what happens if she grabbed my wrist with a gentleness akin to a pair of fluffy, pink handcuffs?

I screamed, of course!

At first, I screamed in shock. I was plummeting hundreds of meters a second, how was I still alive?! But then I screamed in fear, because I realized what was happening. This went on for a few agonizing seconds and it was more agonizing for Serra's ears than for me, I assumed. After that however, I screamed in delight. How could I not?

I was flying through the air at sub-sonic speeds, without aide or wings—er, well, Serra was holding me, and some weird magical halo of light surrounded my head. I could see it because it sort of blinded the corners of my eyes. Well.

Fucking flying is fucking amazing. Fuck. I don't curse lightly, but this is one of those occasions where I just have to do what I have to do.

So we flew, for some time, to misty isle, far, far away.

See, magic is a pretty simple thing, when it comes to binding the lands to yourself. Binding a room to you might take a few minutes, while binding a mountain might take weeks. But the opposite might be true, that a mountain range could take only a few seconds, while a single puddle might take months. How did this make sense? Serra seemed to make sense of it in the same way she made sense of what we were.

According to her, we are the most powerful magic-using entities because of our close-ness to magic. It was like the comic book version of Fairy Tales; a Djinn who is made up of 98% magic would be inherently more skilled and infinitely more powerful in the magical arts than a regular, baseline human. In comparison, a Planeswalker, who is half made from the material stuffs of all planes, and half comprised of the otherworldly essence of what is Outside of the Planes, is more likely to be able to tap into the Aether than a regular being. After all, drawing from the Aether is just another form of tapping into the infinite well that is the Outside. It is a blinding place with practically infinite power, which lent it the name the 'Blind Infinities'. And only we, can tap fully into its power, where others are so limited they might as well be drinking a drop at a time while we drank oceans. When we took that Aether from the other side onto this side, it was shaped by the place which we took it from, or tapped into, into something that could be called Mana, in its rawest form. And then we shaped it further—again and again—allowing for intricate spells…

… Well, that really didn't matter much though, because Serra was willing to share her Realm with me. "But how do you know I am trustworthy of that?" I had asked. It was an honor, to be sure. I was equally frightened and shocked by the offer. It is scary, stressful and tiring to have such a burden yet it was incredibly unexpected.

"How can I not? I have seen what it is that you are. Your character, inviolable spirit and soul, is laid bare to me in my halls, Little Lady," She hummed with a voice filled with humor.

But I didn't share that humor. "Wait, how did you… what did you… did you read my mind or something?" That was crazy! White didn't do that! Blue did! What… how…? Oh, and it's a violation of my privacy!

She tilted her head the other way, a small scowl of confusion forming on her alabaster skin. "Nothing so crass, but if a Planeswalker were to enter your Realm, where your soul is brought to life? Would you let strangers walk on your soul without question? The multiverse is a harsh place, Little Lady, and there are dangers out there you cannot imagine. Would you really not check as I did, to see if at least intruders meant harm?"

I felt my cheeks redden and I looked down at my feet. This only made me feel guiltier, because I was looking at the skirt that she had sown, the shoes she had gifted me, and the bracelets she crafted from the Mana of her Realm. I sniffled and wiped my eyes on the short sleeves of the blouse she had woven for me.

"Oh…" she started to say.

"I'm fine!" I grumbled. "I just… I just have something in my eye." It wasn't very convincing. Heck, who am I kidding? I couldn't even convince myself. But I was never good at apologies. "I… I-I… um…"

"Come here," Serra smiled sadly. She hugged me, and all was well.

Of course, I had to humiliate myself the next day by fumbling on the apology that I did plan on giving her. But I don't think that's a story I ever want to tell.

Anyway, we were flying, right?

So we flew, somewhere passed at least a hundred of those floating islands, each more majestic than the last. Thousands of angels flew around us at a respectful distance, singing a choirs so beautiful, I might as well have converted to whatever religion she was preaching. And somewhere between here and there, my screams turned to laughter.

We flew over a small land surrounded by mists almost out of the infinite dawn of the Realm, but never really. It was lowly hanging over a greater mass of water, which fell on all sides in a beautiful cascading waterfall that caused the strangest double rainbow I've ever seen. It was two rainbows in the shape of a ring, one inside the other, and too bright to look at directly for long.

"Where are we going?" I shrieked over the great winds that didn't muffle my voice at all. I think Serra broke physics in some ways into little pieces for that to happen.

Serra looked down at me, "Why, we are going to the first place you will bind to yourself. It is a most sacred rite, for some, though others care not for it. I stand somewhere in between, but it does have significance."

"And what significance is that?"

"It is, after all, where you appeared first, in your first jaunt through the Blind Eternities, Little Lady," Serra answered with soft laughter.

"Huh, alright," I crossed my arms and studied the place. It was like something out of a fairy tale or a story book, but then everything was that way in Serra's Realm. "What's it called?"

"There is only one place here." Serra pointed through the impenetrable mists that caused even her angels to stay a safe distance from. It drew me in, hypnotically, yet while I stared into those mists, I felt fatigue wash over me, yet I felt invigorated. It was a strange paradox that seemed to draw me in, yet push me away; asking me to take up its powers, yet forcing me to cast it aside. "It is called the Tabernacle at the Fortunate Isle."


	4. a girl visits an island

"This is boring," I spoke to nobody and nothing. I was in the middle of a valley of hills, small, but able to enclose what seemed like an infinite amount of white around me. It was the fog, I thought, or perhaps it was mist. I never could understand the difference between the two and used the terms interchangeably. I could barely see passed my hands here, and the white gases swirled around me like some sort of wall. "How am I supposed to connect to the Aether through this place if you won't tell me anything about it?" I grumbled.

"It is like you said, Little Lady," the resounding echo of Serra's voice intoned in my head like a hundred wind chimes. "If I fill your head with preconceptions, then how can you truly appreciate what it is? There is a difference between reading something from a book and actually experiencing it."

I crossed my arms, "But I can't experience anything like this! It's… it's all just mists!" I threw my hands up into the air in exasperation.

"You have been walking for from one dawn to the next, have you experienced nothing other than blindness?" Serra asked softly.

Ah, was this a test? 

_If it is, then I think I failed the first question._ I stopped in my tracks. The mists stopped swirling and began to settle with a painful slowness akin to watching ice cream melt in a summer day. Realization that I was supposed to appreciate the place, and find meaning in it like drinking wine was not lost to me. _Fuck_.

But at the same time, I really wanted to just get to the fucking magic!

"How can you bend the forces of the multiverse to your will if you have yet to know what they truly are, Little Lady? You cannot travel a thousand miles without taking the first step," Serra remarked in a rather nonchalant tone, which meant I did something to offend her.

_Did I say that earlier bit aloud?_

"Yes, and that too," Serra chortled softly.

It wasn't that I didn't appreciate her help, but I find it strange that she is picking up my sense of humor. Actually, it was a little frightening, to be honest.

I took a deep breath and sat myself down.

The grassy hills were damp with mildew, and the air was just chilly enough for me to see a hint of my breath in the air. It wasn't cold enough to cause humps on my skin, but it was not warm either. Imagine the perfect day, except the only difference was that instead of a clear sky, everything was white. Thin, golden beams of light shone down through the mists, like penetrating pillars that danced around, much like a golden Aurora Borealis.

There was a paradoxical existence here on this isle, hidden between the leafy blades of grass that grew just tall enough to be soft for sitting on, yet not tall enough to hide dangerous critters in. The sound of water was ever present, like a small spring that circled around me. I felt like there were eyes on me; it was not just the eyes of Serra and her angels, but the isle was watching me, from behind the sparse bushes and tall tufts of grass.

If I were on a blessed island of faeries, this would be it, I imagined. But Serra would not allow Faeries, not of that kind, of Blue and Black, would she? The very presence of my surroundings belied only an orderly goodness that should only be an ideal, not a reality.

The mists seemed to thin, but nothing else happened for many moments.

Agitated, I plopped down on the grass and lied back. _Be patient,_ I told myself._ You have a thousand life times to learn. Stop demanding to know and start observing._

But no revelations came to me, not immediately. I had a hundred thoughts that distracted me, now that I had actually calmed my senses down enough for me to think straight. _How is my family doing? How are my friends? I think I've already missed my niece's birthday three years in a row because of my studies, am I going to miss all the rest too? I could really go for a crème-filled donut about now. Or even just a nice, big, chunky chocolate-chip cookie, fresh and moist out of the oven. That'd be nice. Ugh, my butt is itchy. These clothes have really thick threads. I…_

I need to focus.

What was I just doing? I wiped that away. I didn't have the luxury of going back, not with something like this. Was I power hungry for wanting to stay here rather than to go home? Would I even be able to get home? I slapped my cheeks as hard as I could.

"Ow."

"… What did you do that for?" Serra asked hesitantly from somewhere above, where she was watching.

"I was distracting myself; I needed some focus," I stood and clinched my fists. I stretched myself too, it was good to stretch, I always said. When I was a child, I practiced Taekwondo, just like about every other kid in my State; it was like those studios were a form of childcare or something. But bestowed me with a sort of habit that caused me to pick up Muay Thai and various other tidbits of martial arts as I grew older. Some of it stuck, some of it faded, but it was a familiar exercise…

… Even though I shouldn't need to do it anymore. Really, why would I? I am a thought-based, eldritch-horror entity that can rewrite reality, why would I need to fall back on these primitive ways of causing harm? _You could punch out Cthulhu,_ a rebellious thought chirped, all too happy to contradict me.

_True, I could punch out Cthulhu. But let's be serious here for a minute. That's decades off at best._ It was good to ambitious, but growing up as a girl in a traditional Chinese family in the State didn't really lend me any favors in that aspect. I could still see my hag-like aunt, with her layers of make-up and fake smile grouching at me, "Become a doctor of a lawyer, or else!" And that was before she stole my mom's lifesavings, I think.

Ugh.

I dozed off there for a second, but then I looked down. I was stretching myself like a kid, with loose and flexible joints. I mean, I wasn't old, but hell, a year of partying in college did unhappy things to the body, alright?

_Wait._

_Wait, wait, wait, I'm not one of those crappy, vague new Planeswalkers like Jace or Chandra. That's right… _Part of willing myself to become something was to imagine it. That part was easy. I could see myself doing Jackie Chan stunts pretty easily, even if I haven't attempted to be so suicidal in a couple of years.

"Heh, this is pretty awesome," I admitted to myself, as I jumped up and twirled around, shadow boxing those characters from the Jackie Chan cartoons.

Serra hummed at this, "That's a rather pretty dance, Little Lady. Does it help you concentrate?"

"Yeah," I nodded, willing sweat to appear on my forehead even though I no long needed to sweat. My hair, which had been bound back in a simple ponytail, now whipped about, rather like a real pony's tail. "Exercise usually helped me clear my head…" I trailed off, thinking about the mists…

The mists…

They parted more and more. She had said there was a Tabernacle here, where I was found first in her Realm. There was a Tabernacle in the Magic Cards too, a rather infamous one at that. I could almost see it in my mind's eye—

It stood tall and proud, with thick, white walls that seem solid despite being made from wood and stone. Its windows, for there are four on each side, are simple, yet elegant. Designs of swirls, like waves of water or like rolling mists are carved on those edges. There are two small towers, just another floor above the rest of the structure, with pointed roofs that seemed like two small, white-capped mountains from a distance. Golden and silvery mists swirled around the place, covering the thick greenery that hid it even better still. Thin trees lined around the tabernacle, but their canopies are hidden by the white mists too. There was something magical about the place, so much mist, and I…

I…

"Oh dear, Little Lady?" Serra called into my head.

I tried to frown, but then I had no face. Then I tried to answer her, but then I had no lips, no tongue, and no throat. I tried to move, yet only the mass of mists swirled.

Serra's light broke into the impenetrable mists, easily splitting the ocean of white into two. She stood at the center, looking concerned, but not confused, "Little Lady? Can you hear me? I do hope you haven't fallen asleep… mayhap you can try communing to my mind, if you have no voice."

"Serra…?" I was confused. There was no pain, but I could feel nothing else either. Serra was blinding to look at, and I shrank away from her being. "What happened…?"

Serra placed a hand on her hips, causing small folds of her blue skirt to rise up to her silver belt. She had a sort of exasperated yet amused look about her, but I found I couldn't look into her eyes without wanting to blush, even when I couldn't. The air around us grew hot and heavier as she stared on. "Are you alright? Can you think of yourself for me, Little Lady? Think of your body." Her voice was fast; faster than how she spoke before we were on the island. There was an underlying tone of urgency there, that I now could hear where I heard nothing before.

"Alright…" I thought about myself. I am just a plain girl, with nothing special to myself. But that seemed to not conjure a single image of myself, even in my own mind._ Did I need to reconstruct my own image in my own mind?_ The thought was irritating and seemed stupid.

I should know what I look like!

But I didn't, not really. When was the last time you looked into the mirror, to study every hair, every pore, and every flaw of your features? Who would even have the time to do that these days? I certainly didn't.

I tried anyway; I could guess what happened. I had become the mist. _I had become the mist_. The thought caused the mists to waver and shiver and swirl around Serra like a miniature tornado. But then I was more wind than mist, but… I had become a piece of nature itself? What exactly had I become? I had too many questions, and not enough answers.

_Alright. Thin, small body. I think people called me petite or something to that effect. Or a person did, anyhow. I was not tall, but not noticeably short, let's see if this works. Imagine that image, erm…_

I looked down. Oh, I had eyes again. "Hm… A bit too thin now. I wasn't this flabby either." I looked like a cartoon character, which is nothing against cartoons, just that the girls in a majority of those either had perfect bodies that always great poses or they had really weak and flabby bodies that somehow did amazing stunts. If I had to guess, I'd say I was somewhere in between, though probably a lot closer to baseline humans than either of them could be. "Right then. This feels right," I said after the eighth time. On the first six tries, I was just trying to get my body right, but then on the seven try, I realized I had forgotten the clothes Serra made me.

"Well, this feels nice," I muttered, straightening the white skirt and simple, white blouse I had on. I looked up and gestured towards the mists, which parted to show a building very close to what I imagined was the tabernacle. _Almost exactly like it, actually…_

Serra smiled at me, "That was rather unconventional, Little Lady."

"It worked, didn't it?" I muttered. I had become the nature of the land, a part of the land, how could I not be connected to it? This feeling was different though, it was like… what I thought Superman felt like if he took time to bathe in the center of the sun.

_Invigorating has nothing on this sort of feeling._ Energy filled into me, and I realized, for the first time what the 'color pie' meant. The colors were simply the closest the other Planeswalkers could come to describing this power. In reality, it was akin to trying to describe color to the blind. _There is so much __**everything**__in it. _I felt like I was going to burst.

Another wave of my hand, and the path between me and the building was cleared of mists. It was just about the only thing I could do with this power, this White Mana, at this time. That action was completely instinctual, and as soon as I did it, I felt as if I were emptied, only for the power to fill me again. The closest analogy I could think of was how quickly a toilet might refill, but I didn't really want to compare myself with a toilet. Thanks, but no thanks!

"So…" I turned to Serra.

"So?" She smiled back at me.

I shrugged. Black curls of hair rolled down my shoulders. I was a bit vain in my bodily reconstruction, and I really liked Serra's hair. So what if I made my own a bit curly? Girls do it all the time! Hmph. "I suppose I should, ah… knock and check it out?"

"'Check it out' indeed, Little Lady. They have much to teach you, in the healing and spiritual arts," Serra nodded before disappearing in a trick of the light. "I had sent one of my own to study here too. Come, my dear Radiant should be waiting for us inside."


	5. a girl meets an angel

Serra, despite being beautiful, had a motherly aura about her. I think, it was due to a combination of factors, including her nearly-invisible wrinkles that denoted an abundance of laughter, her simple, mono-colored clothing, and the patience she showed for everyone who took the time to greet her.

On the other hand, this new girl, Radiant, was something completely different. She looked the down-to-earth sort of girl, with a long, blonde pony-tail and sharp eyes. There was a sort of masculinity in her stance, from the way she walked to the way she talked. Nevertheless, she was beautiful in her own way, with lightly sunned alabaster skin, without a blemish and a tiny knot on her brow, as if she were constantly deep in thought. She wore a garb stranger than Serra's; it was a sort of baby blue tunic with its sleeves tied tightly against her skin, as if preparing her for combat. A battle skirt of the same color reached down to her ankles, though only her toes showed, because she was floating a few centimeters above the ground.

Ah, yes, and she had a pair of great, white wings on her back. If not for that, I would have mistaken her for one of those girls I meet on occasion back in California, just out for a walk all by their lonesome, barely out of high school, or perhaps still in it. As it was, I could only guess that her age was at least a magnitude greater than mine.

She bowed to her waist at the sight of us, looking down in deep respect while clasping her hands together in worship. She stated nothing, but after she stood straight, she spared me a sideways glance in question.

"This is my little protégé, she will be studying here for a while," Serra smiled and patted me on the back, as if to encourage me into greeting this angel, Radiant, on my own. Then she gestured to the pretty angel, "This is Radiant. She is one of my first angels, and one of my most devout. She is currently meditating here on the nature of service and faith, right? Ah, yes, and she is under her self-imposed silence. Should you be in trouble, she will come to your aid."

I stared up at Radiant. She was a head and a half taller than me, and that was without her floating in the air. The stern stare she had made me want to curl inward, or wrap the mists around me and hide in this cocoon.

Radiant looked down at me at the same time, and raised her chin. I thought she was going to nod at me in acknowledgement, but she huffed.

I knew that look; it was universal amongst angels and humans, then? It was a look of nonchalance, but also of superiority and of dismissal. At least, that was how I imagined she must be thinking, despite not knowing why she thought that way. It irritated me.

Serra chuckled, but when I turned towards her, she smiled and said, "You have some differences, in culture and in your growth. Do try to be friends. Radiant, my Little Lady is young, she has a lot of to learn so be patient with your differences. And you, I can see you don't like to be treated that way, but don't take such things so personally; Radiant has a sharp eye and a sharp tongue at times, yes, but she is honest about it. She'll be a good friend, Little Lady." Serra petted my head until my hair was a mess, and then turned about. You two have fun!" Serra waved and flew away joyfully.

Radiant turned back to me at the same time I did to her. We stared at each other, and I knew then that we would not get along as Serra thought we would. But at the same time, I thought we would both try. For Serra's sake, I would. Still, this didn't dampen my irritation, which grew when Radiant turned away without a word.

After several paces, she turned around and looked at me in question with half-lidded eyes.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming," I rolled eyes and followed her. _Honesty and sharpness? Isn't that just a nice say to say sometimes she's a bitch? _I guess something of what I was thinking showed on my face.

To be honest, in hindsight, we got off on the wrong foot. But it would a while before we would speak cordially to each other, and a long, long time before we would be anything that resembled friends.

Radiant mediated on her own, isolated within the tabernacle. Yet she was also influenced by the place, as I was, though in a more subtle manner. She required scrolls and tomes, both for study and for her own records. But the only way she could gain either of those was through the acolytes of the residence. They treated her like she was an honored scholar, or a wise sage who was on a hermitage. But what did I think about her? _What a stuck-up—_

It was the small things that made me think this, the way she would not even give the acolytes a nod of thanks or how she seemed to think of her duty not to do the chores around this place. Sometimes, I thought, perhaps her focus on her work was more important, but we started off badly. I didn't even know why she was upset with me, and she probably didn't know why I was upset with her.

So we played this fake-cordialness and silent game with each other._ Girls._

Anyway, a guy walked up to me and introduced himself as the 'Magus of the Tabernacle'. He stood about yay-tall, broader and taller than Radiant, except he had this huge white robe on with a white, conical hood attached, except he also worn a weird samurai-armor-like garb on top of that. And he sounded like he was speaking into a container, sort of like how Tom Hardy sounded when he portrayed Bane in _The Dark Knight Rises_. "I have been informed. Yes. Of your situation. Yes. You know nothing of magic. I shall teach you, how we mortals do it. Our methods and our reasoning, but the Lady Serra tells me you must not let this bind your perceptions. No. But it is a good place to begin. You must learn to create mage-lights before you can go on to resurrect battlefields."

"Sure," I agreed. What else could I say? I was in a volatile mood at that moment, too many ups and downs causing me to feel annoyed with everything, especially when I was not in Serra's direct presence. Or maybe it was because I was here, in this paradoxical place. It feels like I'm trying to look left and right, front and back, at the same time. I raised a hand to rub the bridge of my nose.

"Good. Yes." The Magus nodded. "Because learning will be tedious. And it will be difficult. Thousands of years of writers and scholars have caused an overabundance of material, even for a place like this. But for you, one so like the Lady Serra, it will be useful. Yes. For the presence on this island shall guide your spells, and show you a unique perspective. A sort of black and white, in coexistence. Yes. You shall see. But first…" He guided me to a small, wooden desk. It was simple, with no drawers and small, which was great for someone my size. Then he piled tomes onto it until the tower of scrolls and books loomed over my head.

I stared up with large, wide eyes and gapped.

"Yes. Read. When it is done and you have learned how we think, then you will have my permission to practice. No, never before. Too many things can go wrong."

Flipping a scroll out, I realized I'd have to learn to read this text, even if some kind of magical translation spell allowed me to understand it. No one had type writers here, everything was scribbled by hand.

With no self-restraint by this point, I let out a loud, pathetic groan.

_It's almost as if no one told you Magic was not mostly about awesome battles or bending reality to begin with or something, _a rebellious voice at the back of my head snarked.


	6. a girl and an angel walk into a bar

As it turned out, what we called 'Colorless Mana' was actually what closest to the pure form of the Aether from the Eternity Outside of the Planes. It was powerful and difficult for me to control, so I started with something calm and simple: White Mana. In my short experience, I thought that perhaps White was the best for a beginning student to start with. But my perceptions were colored by my own experiences from when this seemed like only a card game; I had entered the card game back in elementary school with a White deck. It was the easiest style of play I could understand, and I had a legendary creature of that color from my first booster pack.

So perhaps, I was destined to start with White; it was very compatible with me and I felt like I understood it innately. My ability to understand the theories (thankfully I could speed read most of these tomes after getting used to them) and learn the magic that is under the White category surprised my mentor Magus. It was but a few days before I was squeezing drops of the White Mana into existence, making a sort of healing salve, which was stored for later in the tabernacle. The liquid honey was White Mana given form, and much like how creatures could be made this way, the healing salve was solid and independent of my powers once I had formed it—and once that happened, it was no longer magic, but medicine.

Once I delved deeper into the books, I realized that the White was not as innocent as to be confined to healing and angels, things that I would associate with purity and goodness. Instead, there was a different side to it, once I learned the first spell of mine that would count, traditionally, as an enchantment.

Originally, it was intended for soothing the souls of the war weary, but I knew what I saw. It was not called Pacifism, but it had the same effect, and it might as well have been called that. You would have thought that Blue had the domination over mental magic, right? I had thought that, but now I didn't, but then I didn't know what Blue spells were like to begin with. Still, Pacifism was surprisingly easy to learn and master…

The Magus was not happy with me, and he expressed this by grumbling and interrupting my studies at the most inopportune times. It was something about wasting my time on a single spell when I should be studying broader ways of removing or preventing wounds. Well, I learned some other things, but mostly, I was a brute with my Mana.

I had plenty to spare, compared to the others here. The Magus grumbled, making it as if my flaws were that I had too much Mana and not enough finesse… But that man expected too much from me, when I have only been here for ten days. It was like he expected me to have devoured every piece of knowledge available already!

Still, I would like to think that things are getting better for me now. And things seem to have cooled down a bit between Radiant and I too, but that was hard to tell…

"What're you doin'?" I bounced over to where Radiant stood, on the edge of the island and overlooking a vast, infinite field of clouds. She had been standing there all day.

She turned to me and attempted to hide a scowl. She didn't have much skill in hiding her expressions, and I had a sneaking suspicion that she had no intent to hide what she felt about me anyway, "I am contemplating the clouds."

"That… sounds really dull." At least she isn't under her vow of silence anymore. Without any other social interaction on this island, I was slowly descending into madness, maybe.

Radiant looked away from me and directly into the distant, always present dawn. "It is the task given to me, by Lady Serra."

"What, contemplating the clouds?" I asked dubiously.

"No," Radiant turned back to me, with a completely serious expression, but her tone belied that she wanted to roll her eyes at me. Did angels have that body language though? "Lady Serra commanded me to express myself through poetry, and to craft a new poem. I have been working on a poem regarding the clouds that the Lady's angels inhabit," she said slowly, as if explaining to a child.

"Huh. How about… I dunno," I was terrible at poems. How do poems even work? Something about rhymes? I liked haikus better. "How about 'twinkle, twinkle little star / I want to hit you with a car / throw you off a tree so high, hope you…' er, wait, that's probably not appropriate to give to Serra."

"Your inane attempts at provoking banter again?" Radiant tilted her head to a side. I hated it when she did that, because the way her hair would fall over her eyes reminded me so much of Serra. Argh. She turned away dismissively, "Return to your task of learning, little girl."

_Ah-ha, you do want to banter!_ Yet I found myself whining to her, with no one else to complain to, "But I don't wanna! All work and no play make me a dull girl."

I must have misjudged her tone earlier though, because the expression she sent me was of cold contempt. "Your duties are infinitely more important than your wants." She scowled, marring her beautiful features with a frown that seemed to only accentuate how near-perfect her features were. Then she added, "Continue as you are, perhaps Lady Serra will see why she should not have waste her time on you."

"H-Hey! I've been working my ass off, Serra would see that! I've been making good progress!" My fists clenched at my sides. Was it me, or were the mists starting to shiver? "And duties aren't the end-all, be-all of everything!"

"Oh?" Radiant raised an elegant eyebrow at me, "And I suppose you contemplate your existence and purpose too? See how frail you are. You do not even have a purpose outside of what _Lady_ Serra has assigned you. You must serve your purpose, or what reason is there for you to be?" She crossed her arms and looked down, as if smelling something putrid. "You humans are useful in your own way, but you who care not for your duty are soft and weak, and then you lose your usefulness."

"Oh yeah? What's your purpose then? Write little poems that no one cares for?" I was rather upset by this point to think clearly, a folly of youth.

"My purpose is my duty to Lady Serra, to this Realm," She retorted softly. A dangerous glint was in her eyes and she hissed, "I protect it with my everything. I obey Lady Serra because it is her place to lead and mine to follow, just as it is a human's place to serve and follow their betters. That is the law of this Realm, and that is enough a reason to follow it, but the consequences of such wisdoms are clear in the peace and happiness of the Realm." She drew herself up to her full height, towering above me, "But enough. Have you even though of your purpose in this Realm? Why did you appear here, of all places, little student? Do you know the reason for your existence here?"

It was probably a retort or a jape, but for a moment, I paused and thought about that. I had not thought about why I was here, not really. There was too much magic, too much change and excitement for me to not think of anything other than… well, all of this. I was still shaking with giddiness on the inside, that I was a Planeswalker, one who could create universes and gods.

But what was my purpose here? A cold, heavy feeling sank into my stomach, like a stone weighing me down that suddenly appeared from nothingness. I felt my shoulders sag, but I realized that there might be a singular reason for me to be here, just…

As if to answer my question, I felt a hole in the world slide open and close, and found myself on my knees. It was just surprise, but it knocked the wind out of me. The only way someone could do that, was by Planeswalking… Someone else had just arrived into Serra's Realm…


	7. a surprised girl meets an Urza

"Radiant?"

"Yes?" She was watching me like a hawk, carefully and at a distance. But at the same time, I saw a hint of softness in her eyes, which… I didn't believe! She can't be concerned about me, could she? "Is your health well?"

I nodded absentmindedly, "Yes, yes. Just… something big just happened." There could be only one Planeswalker who visited Serra's Realm, right? I picked myself up and smoothed my skirt.

Radiant stayed silent, on edge but restrained. She queried, "Is this something Lady Serra should know?"

"Ha!" I rolled my eyes. "No… well, yes, but I think she already knows."

"Is that so? Then what is the problem?" She drew back, comforted and trusting my words despite us just yelling at each other a moment before. It was as if she disliked me and thought me a burden, yet trusted me and thought me necessary. I was thoroughly confused by this.

I scratched the back of my head before slowly drawing my hand away. This was another bad habit that seemed to carry over, because I had rid myself of such distractions; I was a construct more of energy at this point than of purely flesh. "I think… I think we need to see Serra immediately. Can you take me to Serra's Sanctum?"

Radiant nodded, "Follow, and I will show you how to run without flagging and fly without wings."

"Flowery," I grumbled, but I followed.

Serra's Sanctum was at the heart of this infinite sea of clouds, if there could be a center to something that is infinite. I supposed it was the same, in the sense that Dominaria was a bubble at the center of a standard form of magic and the occurrences of Planeswalkers, in respect to the Blind Eternities. It was a tower, a beacon of light given form, over a thousand floors tall, yet from the outside, it seemed almost too small and too modest to have housed a being who created this universe and saw all within it with a motherly eye. From a distance, it looked like a golden crescent hanging in the middle of a sea of floating islands, each filled with greenery and peace. Within were a thousand rooms, each belonging to a certain angel or servant of Serra. These halls are marble and gold, intricate to the slightest detail, with each pillar and wall covered with a hundred depictions of Serra and her Angels, and lined with a hundred more poems of their glory. The halls were tall, over 8 meters by my guessing, with chandeliers hanging from the ceilings like crystal nests made from silvery feathers, and yet each hall was filled with song and music of all sorts, all soothing to the soul. Silvery white glows ran through each light, each window, and each tile, pulsing with the power of White Mana. It was intoxicating for me who just learned how to feel for White Mana, and I found myself lost, standing dazedly within her halls and feeling as insignificant as an ant.

We arrived at the aviary, a round concert hall of sorts that could seat thousands of angels. On some books, it is said that when Serra created this world, she and her firstborn angels sang a chorus of creation here. And it is from here that she is nigh-ever present in every part of this plane, and all-seeing. I didn't think I would appreciate or understand what that truly meant, because how could someone truly see and be everything? It was something for the Bible or… ah…

Anyway, we arrived, and saw a circle of angels at seated at the outer most ring of the aviary. At the center, Serra stood talking with a man in tattered and faded blue robes. He had wild, Einstein-like hair, but with a short beard to match. Beside them, two angels watched over what seemed to be the body of a mortal woman. I blinked, _who was she?_

Setting down, I heard the end of their conversation, as Serra finished, "… is recovering. My magic would only kill her. Calm yourself, the medicine is slow, but it will heal her. Ah, look! My Little Lady is here," Serra smiled. "Little Lady, come. This is Urza, one like ourselves. Urza Planeswalker, this is my student, and also the one who created the medicines that are being used for Xantcha."

I looked down at the woman resting on the black and white marble tiles of the center of the room. She was pretty, in the sort of Xena-Warrior-Princess sort of way. She had sleek black hair tied back in a ponytail, like me, but wore a tiara of all things. I found myself pouting at this. _I want a tiara…_ She also wore light-colored leathers with bronze buckles and other metal pieces that I didn't quite recognize, a sort of strange fashion that seemed to only belong to magical, medieval people, I supposed.

"H-Hello," I did a sort of curtsey, because it was fancy in my head, and because it was Urza freaking Planeswalker. I was a bit intimidated, to be honest, to even look up at his face. Instead, I opted for staring at his chest, which I realized wasn't any better.

He leaned down and smiled tiredly at me, causing me to shrink away slightly before I caught myself, "Greetings. I thank you for your help. I… am not sure what I would do, if Xantcha were lost to me."

"Uhm, probably something not good?" I ventured, having already lost my upper brain functions. It was like meeting a movie star. No, wait, it was even better than that, it was like meeting a movie star who became the present, or something! I had to literally pinch my thigh to keep myself from squealing.

Urza smiled, the tired lines on his face seemed to length and darken at the thought. With a half-hearted chuckle, he replied curtly, "Yes. Probably something not good."

"So…" I felt my arms swing back and forth nervously. "What brings you to Serra's Realm?"

"Is that what this place is called? That is fascinating," Urza murmured.

"Something about Phyrexians, perhaps?" I smiled even more nervously.

Suddenly, his glaze intensed, and I felt like I was looking into a pair of blue Suns. The tired but amused expression all but wash away, leaving something cold and stony in its place. A shiver ran down my spine. "How do you know?" I felt as if I were standing on the surface of the Sun, suffocating under an nearly-physical pressure.

"Er…" _Oops? A-ah… it hurts when you look at me like that. It's too frightening._ "Erm…" I looked away, only to find my eyes locking with Serra's questioning glance. _Oh boy_.

She nodded encouragingly, but she didn't say anything.

"I heard stories about them and I guessed? There's only a few things a Planeswalker would flee from, right?" I tried desperately. _Please don't look at me as if I was crazy! Please, please, please. I need a distraction, um… _"Oh hey, did you know they use a sort of glistening oil to corrupt people? You should check yourselves, a single drop could spell doom for this world. They could follow you that way, you know?"

"What?" That surprised him enough to turn his attention away from me. He didn't trust me, not at all, but he was much smarter than me. I knew that Urza knew that it was something very, very possible, and more than a little likely. The blood seemed to drain for his face, which I thought was because of this realization.

But then he collapsed, and I shook myself, realizing that he was more than a little wounded from his excursion into Yawgmoth's world. And he just left me with a hundred curious angels and a very frowning Serra.

_Uh oh._


	8. a flustered girl with expositions

"So…" I fidgeted before the crowd. There was something to Serra's quiet expression that I found odd. It wasn't an accusatory glare, for which I was thankful of, but I couldn't read her. Her frown didn't fill me with hope, however.

Serra folded her hands onto her lap and sat down on her throne. Her eyes swept over the host of angels, passing the few who moved Urza and his strange friend to a room of healing, under Serra's hospitality. It was under that same hospitality that I was under here. I felt my eyes droop down to my toes. Uncomfortably, I began to shuffle on the balls of my feet ever so slightly and play with my ponytail. I did anything but look into her eyes.

"So indeed." She smiled. There was a hint of humor that she gained these past few days, something reminiscent of my own terrible, corny humor. I stopped and looked up at her, thought this was more of a reaction than any action of hope.

"You…" I pieced it together, from the quirk of the corner of her lips. "You knew?" I breathed, now utterly unbelieving of her little play.

Serra nodded silently, encouraging me to continue.

There was a low, encompassing murmur that passed through the crowd of watching angels, like a ripple in a pond. They turned to each other and many looked confused and disbelieving, but none dared to voice any concerns.

"You knew that I knew something about Phyrexia, and of what was to come," I guessed.

Serra's smile widened, but at the same time, her eyes dimmed.

I blinked. "But why trust me, if I hid something like that from all of you?" I wondered, aghast.

"Just as I knew of your knowledge, I too knew that I could trust you, Little Lady," Serra shook her head sadly. "You should know that my magic is far more than just creation of life and reality. My powers do afford me a little to look into your heart of hearts."

My eyes fell to my feet. That was something I still couldn't get over. I didn't like my privacy so easily disturbed, even if there was no ill intent. It was the principle of the thing, I supposed, but I had never thought more about it until recently.

"Lady Serra?" One of the angels behind me spoke up. I turned my eyes over my shoulder and saw a tall, nearly-golden skinned angel standing apart from the crowd. She had a page-cut, which framed her face cutely, and slightly slanted eyes that caused me to realize why no one thought of my features as strange for as long as I have been here (and it felt good to be reminded that I have not seen sight or sound of that sort of racism here). Where almost all the other angels—and Serra—wore their robes and linens and ribbons conservatively, this angel wore hers like a short skirt akin to short shorts and a rather tight shirt. In all, if not for the wings and the rather ornate designs on her clothing, I might have mistaken her for a jogger down on Long Beach.

"Speak, Reya," Serra acknowledged.

"It is not my place to question your judgment, but I question the human's character. She has not spent her years honing her focus nor has she been here long, and now she has neglected to inform us of something that may be important, if only that it might have helped us heal Urza and Xantcha," Reya motioned towards me with one hand, "There is mistrust for you now, Lady Student."

"I…"

Serra made a wave of her hand that I saw in the corner of my eye. I turned towards her and saw that the expression of humor was gone. Gone was the lighthearted banter, though something troubling remained. She held her hand up for a moment longer, but then asked, of me from her glaze and of Reya from her words, "What would you suggest then, Lady Reya?"

"Is not the solution simple then? Our dear student shall impart what she knows! She has acquired knowledge from us freely, should we not have the same?" Reya's last question was aimed at her fellow angels.

"But there are things that are personal," I muttered weakly. The moment I uttered a sound, the aviary quieted, and even my lowly whisper was heard. I blinked, but continued, "And there are things you aren't ready to know. Like, I mean… Um…" I frowned. How could I phrase it that they were like a work of fiction in the reality I knew only a little over a week ago?

"You should have nothing to fear," Reya replied evenly, almost hopefully. I turned towards her and saw nothing in her that signaled intent to harm, backstab or deceit. _But then she is an angel, not a human woman._ Reya smiled confidently at me, "Lady Serra's judgment proves true, so there is nothing for you to fear from baring your knowledge to us. Prove yourself, and then what reason do any of us have to doubt?"

I was confounded, _was she trying to undermine me or was she trying to help me?_ I turned to Serra.

The lady Planeswalker matched my glance and nodded. "Go on," She said, "Tell us what you know. If you hold anything back, I am sure you have a good reason for it. You did not inform us of these… 'Phyrexians' not because you purposely did so, but because it was not a thought that crossed your mind, right?"

"Yeah!" I squeaked abnormally loud, seeing a way out. Hearing my own voice echo in the halls however, caused heat to rise on my cheeks and all the way down to my neck. "I, er, I mean, yes, I kind of forgot about them, because I got to learn magic, how exciting is that? But you know that, of course…"

"Little Lady," Serra interrupted. "What are Phyrexians, and why does such a thought trouble you so?"

I took a deep breath. Explaining just what Phyrexia was would take a while, and even more what they were up to. My heart felt like it was going to burst, there were so many people watching me. It took all my willpower not to drop and cover my face in embarrassment. All those angelic eyes staring down at me intently, without a single whisper or distraction, eek!

I had a bit of a problem with 'stage fright', you see…

Time felt like it stood still, but when I spoke, it moved again. At first, I babbled, but then I felt more comfortable as I progressed, "Phyrexia was originally a plane found by… um, I forgot the name, but a, a person like us, Serra. It was made by someone even before that to be a home for machines, much like your Realm is a home of the heavens."

This revelation caused some murmurs; they sounded somewhat excited to meet what some of them imagined to be their machine counterparts. _Such a hopeful lot,_ I didn't speak that out loud, but they had already forgotten who had caused Urza such harm.

"This person was killed by a Thran a long time ago, like, hundreds of years ago or something, by the name of Yawgmoth. See, Yawgmoth, before he went to this plane, he was a bit of a psychopath." I paused. I was getting a few confused glances, so I explained further, "I mean he has problems in his mind. He killed things, just to see how they died. He caused multiple plagues of various levels of cruelty just because he could. I'm not sure what his justification was, but I don't think there is a reasoning behind his thoughts other than 'because I can'. So, um, after that person brought him to this plane of machines, he killed her and took over, and then somehow became a god or a spirit or something." I frowned. I was never too sure what it was that he had become; there was not much information on that and I didn't really want flip through old books back then.

What a mistake that was, in hindsight.

But now, the angels' reactions were more varied; I saw and heard shock, surprise, horror, determination, and pretty much everything in between. Reya seems most aghast by this, "But this was hundreds of years ago. What did this Yawgmoth do between now and then? He would have so much time to cause untold amounts of destruction, if he were equal to Lady Serra in power…"

I rolled my eyes, "Yes, I'm getting to that. He decided that plagues weren't very fun, so he wanted to create a vast army and invade Dominaria, where Urza is from, I think. There were a lot of attempts by him to send agents in, demons and the like. He even has human agents, but they mostly are the sort that don't even know they are doing his bidding until their handlers, that is the demons or whatever that are in control, come for them. I think." There was a sleeper agent card, wasn't there? I wasn't too sure how this had translated into real life however.

"Wait, but then how do you know this?" Reya asked. "If you had not practiced magic before, how is it possible that you know so much about the inner workings of, by your words, a god?" And how did we know you aren't a spy, right?

"Well, um…" I couldn't just say there was a card game based off of their history either. "There's a company," I started to say, and then I got an idea. "In my home world, called the 'Wizards of the Coast'. They specialize telling the lore of other worlds. I was an avid, um, reader of their tales. One of their most famous stories was that of Urza Planeswalker."

"Whose story has yet to be told," Serra added quietly. She looked shaken for some reason, but she wasn't looking at me, anymore.

"Well," I shrugged. "I guess they could see the future, or something?"

Serra's brow furrowed. "That is possible, but such magic is unstable, and highly dangerous."

"But it is possible, right?" I asked and then added, "And more importantly, according to the story, Urza will need about five years to heal. After he does, however, Phyrexians will attempt to invade… uh, here."

It was Serra's turn to blink and lean forward, as if she had not heard me correctly, "What?"

"Uh, they will attack in five years?" I thought she was asking for more detail, so I added, "They've got that Glistening Oil, which is pretty dangerous. It can stay dormant, but eventually, it will corrupt whatever it touches and try to replicate Phyrexia, so we should have Urza and his friend checked, or something, right? Um, the 'Wizards of the Coast'," I realized it was probably best to play them off as actual wizards instead of people with a monopoly on the ability to turn cards side-ways. "They said that Phyrexians will corrupt your Realm so much that light will disappear. It'll be a nightmare. Um. Also, the people and angels they kill will rise up again under their control, and will kind of, maybe… try to spread misery and pain and death everywhere?" By then I was guessing, because while the later adventures of Urza's little Bloodline and Weatherlight sagas were fun, the parts about Serra's Realm I mostly glossed over. I mean, it was depicted as a generic heaven-expy, right? Not… this.

There was silence in the room, which stood for several minutes. And then Serra shattered it with a whisper, "This is troubling, but we have five years. We shall prepare and stop this."

"I shall marshal and fortify," Radiant began to say.

I cut in quickly, "With all due respect, Radiant, that won't be enough. You'll need more, much more of pretty much everything. I only saw a small part of this Realm, but while the clouds are infinite, it seems like angels and humans here are not. You are going to fight against a foe that has had hundreds of years to prepare, and with the ability to turn your dead against you." I turned to Serra, "We need better infrastructure, more people, less reliance on just magic, because even that has limits, and so do their users, and—"

"That will be unnecessary, little girl. You have only read of war in books, but I am a general, and I have been a guardian of the world since its inception," Radiant might as well have had harrumphed at me with that tone. She crossed her hands and unconsciously rose a full foot into the air. Tiny beams of light rolled off of her like a halo as if she were a living saint. But an angel was a step above that, I supposed.

"But you, I, argh!" I stomped my feet in frustration. That probably didn't help my case at all, but then I added, "Your _way_ will just end up with what happened in the stories! You'll have places so dark here, that Serra won't be able to even look at them without crying, and you'll have angels who will be glad their fellows had died, because they died for their sake! Listen to me, dammit!"

"Calm down, both of you," Serra's voice boomed. It seemed as if the world shook, in the sense that the air, the ground, my organs and my skeleton all vibrated for a second. Then she sighed and continued to say in a more normal volume, "I cannot know what you have planned, Little Lady, but it sounds like more industry, and becoming more alike to Phyrexia, is it not?"

"It's just having more machines, maybe, and maybe some more ways to keep them out!" I protested.

"But," Serra glared at me for interrupting but continued to speak without pause. "You know more of our unknown enemies than Radiant or I. My people will not follow you out of blind faith, Little Lady. You will need to prove your way is not just viable, but also compatible with our way of life."

I noticed that she had included herself in their way of life. But I had included me in us too.

"Radiant will carry out the main defense preparations," Serra decided after a moment. Radiant glanced at me, positively smug even if her expression was blank. Serra added, "But if any of my angels were to volunteer their domains to my student's service, that would be acceptable too."

At that, the hall burst into whispers.

By the end of the day, I ended up with two angels standing before me. One was a Lady Reya Dawnbringer, the earlier outspoken angel with a sort of naïve yet cheerful expression. I kind of wanted to speak with her anyway, she didn't seem all that bad. Plus, she was a rather cute redhead. The other angel was a regal looking one, almost the opposite of Reya.

This one had pearl-like skin and white-golden hair falling freely to her sides. I had never heard of her either, but I thought I had heard the name 'Lady Selenia' somewhere before. She wore her robes conservatively, covering almost every part of her except for her face.

"I will join you," she had said, "Only because someone should keep an eye on you and that wide-eyed Reya. Perhaps I can even keep you out of trouble enough not to hamper Lady Radiant's defense efforts."

"Oh, I think we'll get along real well, I'm sure," I replied.

It would have been a great sarcastic remark, if Reya had not popped up the next second and wrapped an arm around my shoulders and another around Selenia's, and claimed, "Yes, we shall be best of friends, a band of sisters against the tide of darkness, and our efforts shall prevail!"

"Ugh."

I didn't even bother stopping myself from rolling my eyes that time. Self-restraint was for the… well, people other than me, anyway. "Let's just see what we have to work with, alright?"


	9. a studious girl makes a candle

One of the more interesting parts of the magic I was learning was that it was not classified as White, Red, Green, Blue, and Black. In fact, there was nothing to say about the Colors of Mana, because it seemed like I was the only one who saw them in terms of colors. Was it just too powerful and too bright for mortals? It couldn't be that simple; but I liked their methods better, at times.

I read a lot of these different ways of classifying magic the last few days, by means of labels like 'evocation', 'restoration', and such. One of the more interesting ones is the one known to the mortals as the 'creation' class of spells. There was a difference between it and 'conjuration', in that conjured items were 'summoned' or 'borrowed' from somewhere, in the loosest of those terms. It will eventually return, after hours or days. Something created, however, was permanent. Another way to look at this was that one was like a balloon while the other was like a solid ball of rubber. Wait! That was a bad analogy. _Hm…_ I couldn't really figure out the difference, to be honest, but I knew they were different in the only way they could be different: conjuration could make simple tricks, while creation was what was used to make food.

I wasn't quite there yet; I was still on the stage of 'create a candle and light it'. Never mind that I was on an infinite plane of sky that was a never ending dawn, without darkness at all, no, I had to make a candle and light it. How useless was this? Except I couldn't progress unless I mastered the basics.

Ugh.

Another difference between the others and I was that they were simply tapping into what they could from the area around them, while I was tapping into something deeper, and infinitely greater. You couldn't really see this as one of them, but it was rather clear to me, when I knew what to look for. When they lit their fires to roast their meats, it came in an inconstant stream, something that was hard to control. If I wasn't so sure they weren't using Red Mana, I would have said those mortals belonged there. But they weren't. Then I tried to the same with White Mana specifically in mind.

Mind you, in the cards, I didn't think I remembered a single White card that caused fires unless they were mixed, but here… These fires never burned me. The most was that it felt like I was holding onto a flashlight for too long, or that I was basking in the sun for a while longer than I should have. White Mana was controlled, simple, and orderly. In short, for the novice that I was, it was perfect for learning how to _control_ Mana and contort it into various spells.

A drop of liquid rolled off of my index finger, which was pointed at my oaken table. It was milky like cream, yet thicker and slower. Another rolled into existence and down, causing another, larger splatter on my table. But the individual drops circled the center of the impact and grew taller, like a video of the construction of a skyscraper on fast-forward.

Another drop of wax rolled down my finger, and it began to twist. It was like the soft-serve ice cream machines' vanilla favor, which swirled around and formed a perfect serving of ice cream. In that same manner, this drop swirled around the white, milky wax, hardening and lengthening, until it became a stick and was barely two millimeters away from the tip of my finger. Then a single, tiny string popped out of it, and lit up.

I collapsed onto my chair and took a break. "Phew. That was tiring. I don't get how you guys do it."

"Do what?" Reya asked from across the room. She was slowly playing a harp. I've actually never met a real harpist in real life, and I told her so when I first saw the instrument. She had been playing it for me whenever she could ever since. It was something about the whole religion worshipping Serra that backed up her love for music, I believed, but I never got around to asking her about it.

"You know, make loaves of bread, turn water into wine, strike a rock and create a fountain of water, that sort of thing," I listed off. I had seen a few of the humans around making bread, but it seemed like it took them everything just to make one day's batch. Compared to combat spells, creating food was harder? I had a theory about that, something about them only capable of using less than one of ten thousandths of one 'Mana', like the kind in the card game, at their peak. It would make sense, with them being mortals, but there were always exceptions. It was a wild theory anyway.

Reya looked amused. "Angels do not need to eat, silly. I have heard of this wine though, what is it? I had deduced it was some kind of beverage that mortals imbibe for enjoyment, can you tell me about it?"

"I… there's not much to tell," I grumbled. Wine was actually something I had some contact with, having worked at a wine retailer for a short period as an outside consultant in China. It was one of those strange work places where I met famous people trying to sell their wine in China, like Yao Ming. But it also fostered a sort of dislike for wine in me for a long time afterwards. "It's pretty much grape juice that's gone bad, but there's a bit more science in it." I stopped. "I think some people will take offense from the way I just simplified it."

Reya blinked at me in confusion. She looked rather feminine in her look, white dress and short skirt now, but I saw a body trained for war under those folds. That, and she did lift that harp into the study room we were in. She was pretty strong, I imagined. "If it is bad juice, then how do mortals enjoy it?"

"Ah…" I didn't really want to answer. It felt like I was corrupting her or something. Eck.

Instead, I banished my little creation of a candle back into the Outside, where dissipated into a mote of White Mana. Then I tried to imagine grapes and create those. It was a rather difficult to imagine them; it has been a while since I've had some. I was more of a bananas or apples person than a grapes person.

I opened my eyes and looked down.

At my hands were a bunch of purple glass balls, connected by a green branch, also made from glass. "Eh…" I frowned. That wasn't what I was going for!

"Oh, how pretty!" Reya hopped off of her place beside the giant harp. It was a monster of a thing, twice her height and made from pure gold and unicorn hair, probably. I didn't really know what it was made of, but from the carvings on it, I'd assume it was made from the best materials ever. Reya bounded over to me, and then began to poke the glass grapes with one forefinger. "Perhaps you should pursue a career in glassmaking! These are exquisite."

"… Thanks." I still didn't know if she was joking, to be honest. "But those were supposed to be grapes. I guess I still need some practice."

Reya frowned, "But you've only just begun to learn! Surely, even with the encroaching darkness, you can't expect yourself a master by the end of the month!"

"That's what I told the Magus!" I whined, finally having found a sympathetic ear for my complaints. "But he just acts like Mister Miyagi and continues to discipline me with that 'Daniel-san!' tone. Argh!"

"What's a—"

"Never mind that, I should be more motivated though. We need to find some way to compensate for this Realm's weaknesses, and I can't do much if I can't even use magic, or get the rest of them to listen to me!" I plopped my head down on my desk and buried my face in my arms in frustration.

Reya's smile waned, and she looked down at the floor, away from me, sadly. "It is not that you are doing anything wrong, I believe. However, my sisters do not trust you, and…"

"Yeah, I know that," I interrupted. "Radiant's made that clear enough. I don't get her, sometimes she's cordial, and others, she's so scathing!"

"Oh!" Reya hid a smile behind a hand, but I saw the corners of lips twitch upwards. She saw this, and looked away, embarrassed. In a more subdued tone, she replied, "Oh, that. Radiant is one of the most lacking of self-restraint sometimes. She is like many of us; we are… we envy you, for the attention you have garnered from Lady Serra."

I looked up at her, but she was still facing away from me, and deep in thought. I stared at her. It couldn't be that simple, could it? I wanted to pound the table.

"Ever since you arrived, Lady Serra has been watching your growth, giving you small nudges and subtle hints, even when you are not paying attention to your studies. She frets over you, but expresses herself so openly, especially about how she cares for you growth enough to not interfere in its infancy." Reya turned towards me, her tone and expression both determined and fiery, "Do not squander what you have. It is a precious thing that many angels and mortals would give everything for."

"I… I…" I turned away from her. She was just so… intense. I couldn't bear her stare a moment longer. "I know," I squeaked in a soft, awkward whisper while nodding hurriedly.

"Good!" Reya clapped, and the serious atmosphere almost disappeared. "So what have you planned for us then? Lady Selenia is most interested, even if she does not wish to express such emotions."

"Well," I was just thankful we were changing to topic. I looked down and pulled up a sheet, "Like I said before, we have to start growing, but more than that, I guess we need to compensate for the weaknesses of angels and humans in this Realm. You are all so vulnerable to the Black and the corruption that Phyrexia brings… you will need more aide, more than just White, if you want to stand a chance. But then, I don't think Serra would want that, so we need something… in between." I paused.

"Yes?" Reya asked as I stood up abruptly.

I smiled rather grimly at her. "I think… it's time we paid a visit to Urza Planeswalker."


	10. a creative girl makes a daughter

"It is a wagon." Selenia sounded and looked utterly unimpressed. Her arms crossed and her eyes were lidded, and she stood in a pose of one of those high school bullies right out of a Hollywood film. She was here with Reya to see my latest creation, after I began colluding with Urza to learn the basics of artifice.

"It's not just a wagon," I muttered, but I didn't say it directly to her face.

"A steel wagon then," Selenia allowed. "How will that help in the defense against the abominations that you have told of? These Phyrexians won't wait for you to haul them away."

"If you would just, listen, I'll… I… argh!" I stamped my feet against the ground, having come no better at dealing with this sort of conversation than I was three months ago.

Has it already been so long? I spent almost one hundred days here, working, thinking and planning.

It started off simple; I created an island in the sea of clouds. It turned out the principle behind it wasn't that different from making loaves of bread or changing water into wine. I was pretty sure anyone could do it, with the resources at my disposal. I was not even breathing heavily when I finished making this floating land the size of three football fields. _Anime has lied to me,_ I had thought humorously. This all took me less than a few days to realize after I learned how to create the most basic of items. But it was after this, and after my visit and rather lengthy talk with Urza that I had drifted on to difference interests. Serra didn't seem to approve of my new found interest in other means of magic, in creating and using artifacts. Whenever we were in the same room, she would turn away with a sad, lowered look on her face. I couldn't but help feel it was my fault in some way, but I was too busy now with all that I had to learn and build to think on it.

Reya sat on a small nimbus of clouds, swinging her legs around, behind Selenia. And before us was a great creation of mine of steel. Well, it would be steel to these angels, but I knew it was more of an alloy of many different minerals. The so-called 'wagon' was a towering monument to human engineering on the outside, but in that way, it did indeed only function as a wagon. I found myself pouting.

"Did you really think I spent all those sleepless night with Urza to fool around and only come up with something like this?" I waved at my clearly awesome and unappreciated creation. It was my baby, damn it!

"Yes," Selenia replied bluntly. "Or you could have been even more foolish as to attempt other sorts of tomfoolery that only you mortals seem to have a knack for."

I clenched my hands, and then I unclenched the fists. After a moment, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, all the while trying to tell myself that the angel didn't mean what she said. She didn't.

Argh. I wanted to snap at her, but instead, I wove my spell.

It was not exactly a complex thing; I had the theory for it down pretty well, even if most of it was guesswork and brute-forcing with pure power. If that one vampire Planeswalker could create a goddess-angel that based itself on thought, then why couldn't I do this? The Silver Golem, Karn, was proof that an artificial Planeswalker of great power was possible. Or rather, his other creation did, the one that turned a plane into a giant ritual for making it into a Planeswalker. And I knew from all my reading that something artificial, designed for its task, was greater than the organic that… well, I wasn't good at explaining it. I did remember that I had learned a long time ago that things like Tyranids and Zerg could not simply be possible through pure organics, yet machines imitating them were much more likely. It was a rather convoluted thought process, but it boiled down to this.

This silver, eight-wheeled truck sat before me innocently. It would have seemed more in place if it were painted red and blue, and was driven around in a Michael Bay movie. But this was reality, and not simply fiction, and I couldn't afford such extravagance as colored, lasting paints. Figuring out the right, necessary and clearly magical elements needed to create this monstrosity took long enough; just the power stones exploded in my face more than one thousand times. It was a good thing I could dissolve into mists and reform myself.

"Selenia," I growled roughly, no longer having the patience for her sniping.

She blinked and let her arms fall to her sides. "… Yes?"

"Watch."

I plunged my hand into the engine of the machine, and willed it into life. I drew from infinity to create infinity. But what is infinite really? It was a hard concept to understand. Sometimes, when we stick our hands into the ocean, we think that the waters stretching over the horizon were infinite. Then we think of space as infinite. Can we truly measure the Blind Eternities then? But I drew, and I drew and drew. I pulled on more than any mortal could in a life time, for each of the days I spent in Serra's Realm. But I could have spent a millennium using Mana like that, and not have reached what I did in that single moment. I felt like infinity, and more than I could handle.

The whole Realm shook with power… blinding, uncolored Mana. My island in this sky crumbled and melted and froze and died, all at the same time, until even ashes did not remain. The clouds that surrounded us blew away as if this was the eye of a hurricane, and an ungodly heat built up around me.

Reya shrieked and dove away, covering her face and yelling all the same for me to stop. I could not, not now, not after this.

Selenia watched, out of her sworn duty to me, but even the best of magic and medicine might not restore her sight after this. Her body shook as if it were possessed. As if… no, it was not she who was shaking, it was me.

I looked down at my creation again, light coming into its eyes, and I pulled my hand back. I nearly collapsed. My body and soul were so utterly exhausted that I might have simply dissipated into mists and never formed. For a single moment, the sound of grinding metal tore through the air, the sound of my silver truck becoming its truer form… Ah, without land, I was falling…

… And yet a giant, silver hand of a silver giant held me up.

I blinked away the tears from my eyes. The heat was dying and the air calmed. I saw two white holes in the multiverse burning down at me in a stare of curiosity.

My hand reached up to it on without heeding my brain, but I could barely even touch the thumb of the hand that held me. It stood almost nine meters in the clouds, with great streams of fire rolling down its back, keeping it in the air. But its height was least of its properties, I had created its outer skin with war in mind, and it looked akin to one of the Titans of the Adeptus Mechanius in some ways, with plates hiding more than a dozen cannons of different sizes. But it was what was within it that was the most desired prize of many universes. At the center of its chest was the culmination of my time spent was a… a Spark. But was it really a Planeswalker's Spark? It seemed to emanate with such power even greater than I could imagine, but I was too tired to think of it or to question it.

_Maybe in the morning_…

My creation leaned down to me, closer. I heard the sound of a thousand silent gears turning within, the power that I bestowed along with my intent for sentience. I realized that if it just squeezed its hand, it would have crushed me into a fine, red mist. Heh. The lightheadedness was making these stupid puns seem funny. _Ah. I might just die now, huh? Then I probably doomed everyone_…

But it just stared patiently, waiting. I did create it with modularity in mind, I had thought to create some kind of thing powerful enough and intelligent enough… well, it didn't seem to matter what I planned. This was what I got.

The beating flaps of Reya's frantic wings reached my ears, and I turned, to see her rushing towards me with an uncertain and almost fearful expression. Selenia's frightful gasp, and her own seared eyes, both greeted me with a growing sense of foreboding.

"In the tradition of this sort of thing," I muttered blurrily, "I think, I think… I'll name you… Serenity." I paused. The glow seemed to brighten for a second, but it was hard to tell. I was slipping in and out of consciousness, on the edge of infinity and nothingness, "Yeah, we have enough male-Primes already. Why not a girl? Though, no need to tack on the 'Prime'. I don't think I can making another one..." And then I passed out, when I had thought we Planeswalkers didn't even need to sleep.

Just before the blackness took me, I heard a voice that sounded like my own that muttered in acknowledgement, "Mother."

The last thought in my head was not about my baby, this creation, though, nor was it about how tired I was. For some strange reason, I was left wondering, _just what exactly was that filled up feeling in my soul?_ What was it that had just become a part of me, like a connection to the land for Mana, but greater, more defined than anything I had felt before? It was like I had another soul, another whole being, in me…


	11. a reckless girl deals with consequences

"What you did was very reckless," Serra scolded. "But I am happy that you are unharmed."

I crossed my arms, "I don't see why I need to be in bed."

"I am simply unsure of your health, Little Lady," and for once, there was an absence of amusement in her tone. She sounded somewhere between scared, relieved, and worried, if I were to judge her by how I remembered how my mother sounded like sometimes.

Laying back on my pillow, which was stuffed with actual angel feathers (I wondered how much someone would pay for an authentic angel-feather pillow back in the United States?), I replied, "Well, I think I did alright. I feel fine now anyway, and besides, I'm starting to feel suffocated in here. There's still an invasion to plan!" Though to tell the truth, I was starting to really like my bed. It felt like I was sleeping on a fluffy, cuddly and warm cloud. I almost didn't want to get up.

But Serra didn't know that.

She sighed, "Little Lady, just rest for a few days. You can go back to your work afterwards… just… please be more careful with your experiments. Perhaps work on the other things that you wanted to make?"

"I'll think about," I replied. Then I flopped onto my side, turning away from her.

Some moments later, I heard her sighing and trudging out of the room. Was I being too harsh on her? Was I being too childish? I was already regretting it only a few moments after I said it. But at the same time, I really didn't want to be cooped up in here. The truth was there was just too much to be done, and I was almost half-way through my first year!

I was being housed in a different hall, one large enough to even house my baby Serenity. Apparently no one thought I was responsible enough to be without a nurse, which was the same as them handing me off to a babysitter. It wasn't something I was happy about, but maybe they had a point, probably. Someone did mention something about cracking open the plane, but I was sort of out of it when they ranted at me. That person was probably a rather distraught Serra, though.

Still, I was impressed. A hall of healing that could house a nine meter tall golem of war? It was pretty nifty, though the look on Urza's face when he walked in, after he heard what happened…

"That," He had said, pointing at my baby after gapping for a couple of seconds, "is not what I taught you for." He said it slowly, as if he was stepping on eggshells.

I shrugged from my bed. I thought they would have strapped me down onto this thing if I didn't stay in it. "But I succeeded, right? Sort of."

"I taught you how to make a simple ornithopter," He deadpanned.

"It was kind of similar, in theory?" I tried to give him an attack of the puppy eyes, but he just stroked his beard and looked away. Frowning, I added, "It wasn't that bad, was it? I mean, she's practically made to be an antithesis of Phyrexia—"

Urza winced.

"—Aren't you, my little angel?" I asked my little creation.

"I do not understand, Mother," Serenity replied, her eyes glowing with a power similar to White Mana. I would have thought that little property would have calmed Urza down, but it only seemed to have reassured Serra, for some reason. I wasn't sure why Serra was assured by it either, but I would take what I can get at this point.

"It's alright, no one can be truly omnipotent," I petted her foot. Yes, even on my bed, I was just too short to reach her hands. Perhaps I was wrong to have made her so tall… Hm… Being called 'Mother' was making me feel old, actually. I wasn't that old! But I couldn't just say it either; my baby was only a few days old, I had to set a good example for her!

Urza sighed and sat down on the chair next to my bed. He stared down at his lap, now only wearing a simple, white robe and looking much older than he already looked. "I cannot stop you from learning, though we often find ourselves with wisdom only after the consequences of our power has caught up to us. But let us speak of other things, your creation is fascinating, I will be honest about that. But… why silver?" He motioned at Serenity.

"Her name is Serenity, you know?" I pouted. "And Silver is supposed to have some kind of property for resisting something… to do with time? I think? Um."

"You didn't know what its purpose is?" He looked at me wide-eyed, as if realizing there was a ticking time bomb sitting right in front of him. He made a sort of noise, as if about to say something like 'you're a greater fool than I thought' but somehow stopped himself from saying it by choking it down.

I scratched the back of my head bashfully, and giggled nervously.

"This," He stood up, "This is not a laughing matter. But I will try to teach you, if you still need it. Finding the, as you called it, 'Glistening Oil' in Xantcha may have prevented catastrophe for us if we now leave this plane."

"I'm glad that helped," I smiled.

"But if my enemies cannot find me, they will surely redouble their efforts to do so. That may mean more will come to this great artificial realm than you might have anticipated." He didn't look happy at that, but he was glazing at me now and studying my reaction.

"I didn't think of that," I mumbled, the smile suddenly gone as if someone poured freeing water down my back.

"No, you probably didn't," he muttered darkly.

Not everyone was humorous, and I couldn't blame him. What I did know about him war rather limited, but I did remember he had to nuke a battle field with his brother in it, all because of Phyrexia. Something like that couldn't just go away, but I had hoped he wasn't always so serious.

Well, I was wrong to hope for that, because he was always serious. There was a perpetual frown on the man's face, which caused his lines to crease more and made him seem deadlier and older.

I shivered.

"We shall see what will happen, and I hope to… I hope that I am wrong. My experience has taught me enough to know that the enemy numbers above counting, but each individual is used with an excess of calculation." Urza's mood seemed to darken as he thought back. It was not good, because whenever he was in one of these moods, he would start having that frightening look in his eyes, like a horror out of a Stephen King novel. "Their evil knows no bounds, for all that the world might have once stood for, it is gone. Now, twisted demons of flesh and—"

"Hey, so, did you know this is an artificial plane made by Serra?" I asked abruptly.

Urza turned away from his depressing musings towards me with an unappreciative glare. His cheek twitched, as if he was holding back from biting down on something. "Yes, I had deduced that, perhaps from the way there is no limit in depth, height, and width of this world? No matter how deep one goes, there is always more clouds." He paused and then added softly. "Though the energies that must have accumulated and became part of this land must be fascinating…"

"Yeah, alright, why don't you go study that—" Oh, he was already gone.

I turned to Serenity, who was watching me this entire time. It was hard to understand her expression, since it was one that barely moved, if at all. Perhaps giving her total control of these minor details might not have been such a good idea, but I used the idea of a Heartstone as a means for a powerful, mechanical brain. I just wasn't sure if what I created was a Heartstone or not.

Well, it was too late to check now, but she didn't go berserk and kill everyone, so I took that as a sign of her turning out well.

"Have you ever played a card game called Magic the Gathering?" I asked Serenity as I began to recreate the cards from my memory. Several piles of cards flooded out of my small palms.

Serenity's eyes blinked, in the manner that the silver lights that glowed behind her eyes blinked, though she also did have eyelids. I added them for aesthetics. "What is a game, Mother?"

"Ah." I nodded. "This… might take a while. It's a good thing we have some time then."


	12. a Serenity Prime multiplies

Teaching Serenity how to play this card game turned out to be one of my best and worst ideas at the same time. It was one of my best ideas because of how it taught her how 'colors' of magic worked, while simultaneously teaching her the importance of life. Since I was most familiar with the more recent 'Magic 2013' set, that set was what we played. However, I did mix in a few of these modern cards as well, which were strangely out of balance in that the creatures were sometimes more powerful than simple 'instants' or 'sorceries'. I was trying to make her realize the practical value of keeping these silly mortals around; hopefully it left something for her to think about.

It was one of the worst things for me however, because she soon realized what else there was to this game. She learned to read my expression, calculate the chance of my bluffs, and, well… after the first half-dozen games she started stomping me around until I called time-out. Mind you, it wasn't completely smooth sailing for her either, because the card game had some strange rules every now and then that we tried to figure out (I never really bothered to look them up). There was also the issue of many of the cards I couldn't exactly remember. But I had a sort of an obsessive, compulsive disorder towards learning these things, sort of like how most kids were like when Pokemon was first released. Still, I had realized I wasn't exactly human, and that allowed me to recall practically any of the cards I had spent time on.

And I did spend time on pretty much of all of them, at least those that were in the modern set.

Anyhow, after playing a few games of cards, I was starting to get bored of it all. We were at one hundred and three wins for Serenity, forty-one wins for me, and two ties. Alright, it was more than a few games, but my point of boredom stands!

"Hey, Urza," I asked, jumping into one of his little sessions of studying Serra's realm form his bed. Xantcha, Urza's lover or something, was at his side trying to keep up with his speed, but he truly was something of a genius; she didn't stand a chance. "Do you know what an assembly line is?"

He looked up from his notes and frowned. Luckily, he wasn't depressed now, and was more studious than vengeful. "That is a curious term, but I do not know. I can guess its meaning, however—"

"Yeah, yeah, it's a sort of thing that my history books made a big deal about. Still, it's something that works if we can make a factory for this sort of thing." I paused, and then added, "You know what a factory is, right?"

He nodded without humor. "Yes, it is—"

"Yeah, okay, you know, so that's good," I interrupted and started pacing around the room. "What I want is a factory manned by simple artifacts, like… you know and I know that you can't exactly 'kill' a sword and then somehow resurrect it to do your bidding, like Phyrexia does, right? So we keep these artifacts simple enough that they can't be… I don't know, corrupted. Or we could…" I gestured randomly, unable to express myself through words. "I guess, keep them from being corrupted somehow? Whatever, that's not the point. We can work on that later."

"Then what exactly is the point, little student?" He asked with one eyebrow raised. Damn it, did he learn to call me that from Serra? I swear, when I see her…

I shook my head and continued. "The point is, why don't we make a factory that makes more artifacts that work these factories and keep doing it at an exponential rate, and… I guess have something that allows us to turn them into weapons or any other kind of laborers?" I scratched the back of my, slowly realizing, "Oh dear, I don't think I really thought this through."

"You didn't think," Urza looked unamused, but you could never know from that kind of a stony expression.

"I'll… I'll go talk to Serra about this. Or Reya." I rubbed my forehead. "But… do you think that sort of thing is possible?"

He shrugged, "What's the point? Are you trying to drown the enemy in bodies?"

"Isn't that what they try to do?"

"Perhaps." Urza looked away and back to his notes, scribbling things. "But a single individual such as I could destroy countless of these simple, mindless automatons you refer to, I believe. And yet, I cannot even reach the core of the enemy's realm. Do you think you have a chance to do so, if you are so limited by time?"

I blinked.

I stopped pacing around and turned to Urza. I gripped his shoulders, causing him to jolt and Xantcha to gasp in surprise, but I didn't pay attention to any of that. I learned close and shouted against his ear, "You're a bloody genius!" Then I ran out of the room.

Before I left earshot, I heard him mutter, "Of course I am, brat."

"Serra, Serra! I have an idea!" I burst into her chambers.

That was a mistake.

Let me back up for a moment, shall I? Firstly, Serra and I, we weren't exactly on the best of terms lately, and us immortal women… well, we could hold a damn long grudge, alright? We weren't there yet, because thankfully we both still liked each other. Hell, I loved just basking around in Serra's audience chambers in the aviary, because it was so calm and soothing there. But lately, being around Serra caused both of us a tumult of emotions, and I didn't really want to deal with it.

Secondly… well, that one reason was enough to say barging in was a mistake. But the second reason was that she was currently giving audience to Radiant. And also because there was a reason it was called the audience chamber.

Ah, bugger.

"Ah, my little student," She tried to smile. It almost reached her eyes.

Radiant simply glared daggers at me in that sort of cold, sexy look that she had. I didn't bother holding back a glare of my own. I think we hate each other, but sometimes…

"… Ah, am I disrupting?" I backed up a step.

"Yes," Radiant deadpanned.

Serra laid a hand on Radiant's shoulder gently and shook her head, "It is alright. What is it, child? Did you bring a new innovation for the betterment of the Realm?"

"What? No," I shook my head. "I just had an idea, okay? I was talking to Urza today, and he was talking about how he couldn't even breach to the center of Phyrexia, right? Well, that is because Phyrexia has nine layers."

"This is not news or ideas," Radiant muttered loudly.

I ignored her. "But that's what protects Phyrexia from the simplest intrusions, these layers. So I was thinking, why don't we make multiple layers of planes for this Realm, so that even if corruption and evil were to enter one, it cannot touch the others?"

"That has merit," Serra nodded and smiled at me like a teacher receiving an apple from her teacher's pet. "It is an idea that I had thought of, but my dear, such a thing would require great acts of power, power that I cannot simply spare without allowing this Realm to unravel." Then she added, "And neither you nor Urza have the ability for such a thing yet."

"I… Oh, well, when can I do it?" I wondered.

"Perhaps if you were to start learning about my creation of my Realm from me, instead of chasing your flights of fancies," Serra almost sounded like she was hurt and pouting.

"Ah, I, oh, fine." I sagged. "I can't really do much about these other ideas anyway, I'd probably just blow myself up."

"You did blow yourself up, Remember?" Radiant added 'helpfully'. "And it seems like you haven't learned your lesson."

"What?" I turned around.

I had not been paying attention to Serenity since before we left for Urza's room… hell, I wasn't paying attention to her all that much the last few days we played Magic Cards. I must have been a bit feverish, or my attention was focused elsewhere, or…? But there was no way for this to happen in such a short time! It was imposs… impossible… but…

Behind my little silver baby were two silver golems, with my height, my features, hell, they looked like silvery, mechanical version of me, if I had silver tentacles for hair. I boggled and turned to Serenity, "Dear, what are these?"

"These are Serenity." She replied.

"But you're Serenity."

"I am Serenity Prime. These are Serenity of a second generation, Mother. You may call them Serenity the Second and Serenity the Third." She muttered, "Creatures are useful; they aide and provide, and in times they can be sacrificed for a greater purpose. Isn't that your lesson, Mother? Serenity the Second, greet our Mother."

"Greetings, Great Mother," They bowed politely.

Gah. _I'm too young to be a grandma!_ I took a step back, and then another, and bumped into Radiant. At that, I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Ah!"

"… Ah?" She asked, with an eyebrow raised in something between mocking and amusement.

"This… isn't… according to plan," I breathed out. "I think I need to lie down for a bit."

"I knew you weren't recovered it," Serra remarked, placing a hand on her cheek and frowning down at me, her face full of concern. "Serenity, be a good girl and take your Momma back to bed, alright? Make sure she stays there this time." I saw a hint of a grin on her face too, but when she noticed my glance, she turned away.

"I…" I reached up and covered my face with my palm. "You know what, I'm too tired to even fight this anymore. Just tell me how this happened when I find a place to sit down, alright, Serenity?"

"Serenity Prime is my name now, Mother. The second generation Serenities are still unable to decipher if you are referring to them or I when you address us only as Serenity." And she had to say it in a monotone too. I could have sworn she was enjoying this.

"Just take me to bed, damn it."


	13. a Serenity Prime gives names

"Wow," I admired after the second day. "They really do look like me. You did a wonderful job, Prime. But, well, why are they so silent? Not that I mind, but silver versions of myself staring at me is something I'm not going to get used to so quickly. Like that one movie, what's it called? With the children with the silver eyes…?" I frowned and thought about it. It wasn't _Children of the Corn_, but it was something along those lines.

Also, their tentacle-hair felt really, _really _good. It was like goo, but solid and flowing, sort of what I had imagined that one liquid Terminator to feel like the very first time I saw that film back when I was something like seven years old.

Serenity seemed to have learned to ignore my ramblings as unintelligible babble that they were, so she replied, "They are silent because you have made vocal communication irrelevant for Serenity units, Mother. Do you not remember?"

"Did I?" I scratched the back of my head. "I must have, huh? Something about my missing the internet…"

"You created me with the capability of communicating through networks of other, more efficient forms of communication, Mother." She almost sounded exasperated through that respectful monotone of hers; hell, I might have mistaken her for a female version of Iron Man's Jarvis by this point. "Serenity Two and Three have been communicating with me, however they have expressed feelings of inadequacies and fears of disapproval in respects of directly communicating with you. I believe I too have shared these emotions, but you required me to reply."

I paused in my petting of these silver android-me, and turned to my first baby slowly. Then I boggled, noting the seriousness in her tone and muttered, "… You mean to tell me that they aren't talking because they're shy?"

"… I believe that is an oversimplification, Mother." Serenity Prime suggested. "They can communicate with me nigh-instantly besides, but the essential point…" She paused and looked away, before adding, "… But you have a point, Mother."

I planted my face in my palms. "I need some tea."

"What is tea?" For once, I heard a hint of emotion in her tone. It was a truer form of such that made her sound like a living person. Serenity looked on expressionless, but she asked again, more urgently, "What is tea, Mother? You… made me with an appreciation for this substance, but I do not know what it is?"

I blinked and stopped. How long has it been since I was here? _Hell, how long since I've had some tea?_ Time had passed too quickly, far too quickly, and my body no longer told me what I required! Without the need for sleep or sustenance, I had plowed on with random aspects of my studies that interested me, but now I was reminded of my cravings. "We need to fix that," I growled.

Serenity Prime's head tilted, a mimic of the body language that she had seen from Serra, but also surprisingly less awkward coming from a giant robot. "What is the problem, Mother?"

"I need to make some tea," I took my tea rather seriously.

To tell the truth, for most of my life, I didn't take tea all that seriously. But that was the thing with spending half of my life in the land of China; people were so different there, all of this difference coming from the culture. The people I interacted with in China, since I was young, were not like Americans, who drank ice-water or cold cola. No, they drank hot tea or hot water. It was a strange thing for me at first, but I realized they had been drinking only hot beverages their whole life, that drinking something with ice during a meal would actually upset their stomachs. So, to accommodate with all of them drinking hot stuff, I got into the business of drinking tea.

_Ah, tea. _I reminisced about better times, all those times I drank great tea.

"… Mother?"

"Oh, sorry, I was just thinking about tea," I shook myself from my revere.

Serenity leaned closer, "Mother, you have been staring into the distance for the past five minutes."

"It was really good tea, daughter."

Serenity did not respond. I didn't think she knew what to say to that, so she stayed silent, waiting for further instruction. Did she think this was going to be another lesson? 

"Just to clarify, did I make you with taste buds?" I wondered aloud. Of course, I probably did; it would be one of those things that could cause my little baby to appreciate the mortals and their toils. Taste and the ability to take in sustenance like others would be a rather good way for her to connect with others; I made many friendships over the dinner table, after all.

"Yes, Mother." Serenity Prime replied dutifully. "However, we have not yet tested the taste sensors at this time. It is an inefficient use of time to take in sustenance, because we drink directly from the ambient Mana."

"Yeah, well," I made a sort of 'get on with it' gesture with one hand. "You'll probably say differently once you drink some tea. Or eat some hot fudge brownie cake with vanilla ice cream on top. I can make a lot of dishes, you know?"

"Dishes, Mother?"

"It's a way to… you know what, let me just make the tea first." I escaped, I wasn't good at explaining things with words. It seemed to be a problem that I should work on, didn't it?

The tea set I created was made from wood, because I had an appreciation for the Chinese tea ceremony. I mean, why wouldn't I? It had a cute, little cup that could fit between two fingers, and a tiny spoon, and a tiny kettle. The whole thing was really adorable, and a bit more elegant than it sounded.

"This is pu'er tea, it makes me a bit sleepy but it's really good. I remember getting some of this from this tea tycoon back a couple of years ago," I muttered. "Hell, why don't we also make some of this wuyi, too?"

"What is pu'er and wuyi, Mother?" Serenity asked as we created a small table and a set of chairs. It was like playing tea party all over again! Except I never played tea party, I've only learned about such a thing after watching the movies. Well, it was never too late to start!

"They are just names. I'm not sure what pu'er even means, but wuyi is a place. It's just a subtype of a type of oolong tea I drank a while ago, with an extravagant price tag too," I rolled my eyes. Teas had always had some silly names.

After we all get seated (this wasn't easy for a nine-meter tall, several ton giant that was Serenity Prime, but we made due), I poured out some tea. Now that I thought about it, it was rather silly for Serenity to drink from such a tiny cup. It would be like me only drinking a drop, but I supposed we had to start somewhere. "Now, then," I said as I finished off what I remembered of tea ceremony, "We ought to discuss Serenity 'Two' and 'Three's names. Numbers aren't that fun."

"What do you mean, Mother?" Serenity asked as she tried to balance the tiny cup on her finger tip. It was like putting an ant on a person's hand, I was mentally slapping myself for thinking she could drink from it!

"Ah, you know, I named you Serenity," I replied slowly, while thinking about how big of a cup she needed to use. "Names have power, and they have meaning, you know? For you, I wanted it that you would bring peace and happiness and liberty, things that I realize are antithesis of Phyrexia… but! I didn't make you for the purpose of _just_ fighting them, you know?"

"I do not understand," Prime muttered softly. "Is that not my purpose?"

"Initially, yes," I replied. "But purpose is also something you can make for yourself, and I think, I mean… I was raised to believe that all living, thinking beings have the right to choose what their purpose is. You can choose to have more than just the purpose of defeating Phyrexia, you can… I don't know… make it your purpose to travel the planes and discover new worlds, or you can choose to be like Serra and create your own world, or whatever else interests you. I would like you choose for yourself, but I also want to be here to help you and teach you, so that you don't turn out bad, like Phyrexia or something."

"You believe I could become my antithesis, Mother?"

I felt myself blush at the question and I looked away bashfully, "Well, you know, it's like, every parent's fear that their child would not turn out 'right', but I don't even know what right is. I just know what wrong is, and that is Phyrexia's current goal. They're trying to kill or enslave everyone else, and that's, well… that's wrong."

Serenity studied me for a moment, before nodding slowly, as if she understood what I was trying to convey. "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." She stopped and added, "Is that what you mean, Mother?"

I couldn't help myself.

I cracked up and laughed, and it took me nearly a whole minute to calm myself down. "Y-Yes, that's pretty much it, yeah." I sighed and waved her off, "Oh, it's an inside-joke, it'll take too long to explain."

Serenity nodded, and we drank our tea for a moment. "This is… I feel strange, Mother."

"Is that a good strange, or a bad strange," I asked with a frown. The tea tasted fine, honestly!

"… I believe it is a 'good' type of strange. It is an unfamiliar feeling. I wish to feel more of it, Mother." She looked at me, and her eyes were unbelievably bright for a second.

"Alright," I nodded, "but I think you need a bigger cup."

So we made a bigger cup and a bigger batch of tea besides. Perhaps I had made her with similar interests as myself, or perhaps she just liked to imbibe things made from Mana, I didn't know, but her little creations also seemed to ask for more in their own silent, unblinking way.

After another long sip, Serenity suddenly spoke, "Mother, I would like to rename Serenity Two and Three. I would like to choose the names too."

"Alright," I frowned suspiciously at her excited volume. "What do you have in mind?"

And that was the story of how the twins Oolong and Pu'ar came to be named.


	14. a reckless walker creates a moon

"… So that's why there is only one Mana Line in your Realm," I muttered.

Serra nodded with a serene smile. Long story short, we made up. We didn't get any more tension after a few choice words with each other. I wondered if it was because even as godly beings made from energy, we limited ourselves to mortal mentalities as a default setting. Maybe it was because of the way we lived and grew in our environments, but I was certain it wasn't an active choice.

We were in a small tower beside the main aviary. The room was just large enough to be a sort of a marble covered living room. There was a round table at the center, sitting on a fluffy carpet of white wool. Towering pillars of marble surrounded us, but there was a homely feeling to this place. It was similar to if I were visiting the house of one of my older cousins. I had two of them, both were talented girls who made something out of nothing. I admired both of them for that. Of course, being introverted as I was, I never told them this. Even writing these lines down brings a sort of tickling feeling to my sinuses and my eyes, the kind of feeling that usually foretold tears.

I liked that we could make up to each other. I added then, "You know, I really like it here, in this room. It's very calm and soothing. It's… almost like I'm at peace and one with everything."

"'One with everything'?" Serra raised a curious eyebrow at that, "You say the most interesting phrases sometimes, my beloved student." She made no comment on my observation of her room, and I liked her all that much more for it.

"Oh, there's a joke I heard a while ago, it's about a Buddhist monk in New York, and…" I paused at the confused expression on Serra's face. "Oh, right. Uh. How to explain it? Becoming 'one with everything' is a sort of goal of some of the people back on my home plane, it's a sort of transcendence through meditation, I believe."

"But what if they do not have a Spark?" Serra asked, perplexed.

"This, er… I mean, people don't know about that stuff, I guess," I floundered. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to talk about my home, Earth. But almost a year now and I was really starting to miss home. I missed just the simple things: a hug from mom, the smell of dad's cigarettes, and my dog tackling me to the ground. I missed that dearly. But at the same time, there was so much to learn! Mana Lines were essential to the Mana of a Plane, without which even the richest lands would not have any concentration of it. Most planes had one without any color, making them weak, but places like Dominaria had many. But why were they important? Even if a Planeswalker could access infinite power, a plane might not be able to handle infinite power. That is why a Mana Line would be necessary to stabilize what might as well be as close to infinite power as mortals can perceive. Plus, they were great concentrations that gather Mana too! "Why only one, though?" I attempted to steer the conversation back to the topic, "Why not more?"

"But what purpose is there in excess?" Serra asked, before taking a sip of her buckwheat tea. She liked that flavor, something about it reminded her of simpler times, she had said. I thought it suited her.

But look at us. We were two beings, who could bend reality, space and time, were sitting around this cheap, small imitation of my own living room table! And we were both sipping on these cheap, one-dollar cups of tea. Would anyone have believed such a thing? I was still sometimes thinking this was one huge, huge delusion, happening in my head as I laid dying. But other times, these feelings were so fresh and real. It made me curious about things…

"Well, I guess there was no need, but there might be one now," I argued. "Mana Lines can be used by us Planeswalkers to the greatest effect; after all, no mortal could tap into infinity."

"I don't think I can make more so easily," Serra shook her head.

I turned back to my tea and thought aloud, "But what if I made it? A smaller one, a plane within this plane, like a sort of bastion against corruption."

Serra didn't respond immediately.

I looked up at her in question, and I saw the pained look on her face. It took me a while to decipher, but then I thought about placing myself in her shoes. What had evicted her from her beloved Realm in the first place? It was the corruption. The thought of such a dirty thing powerful enough to drive her away much have caused her own imagination to go beyond what I could have conveyed to her with words. I reached out to pat the back of her hand, feeling the wrinkles and veins and knuckles. I saw and felt how truly alive she was and sometimes I forgot she was a Planeswalker…

She brushed away a stray strand of her hair and looked back up at me before sighing. But then she relented, "You may attempt it. But I will be watching, and Urza too."

"Weren't you watching last time?" I grumbled more curiously than begrudging.

"I can't be everywhere at once, I can't right every wrong, little student." She replied, "Even if I see all that happens within my world, and even if I have a well of infinite power. My own consciousness is finite."

"Alright, but…" I looked down. There was no easy way to do this, so I went and said it then, "I won't be adding a line of White Mana, you know?"

Serra paused and stared at me, eyes wide. "But… you don't know how to use…"

"I'll learn, I think. Besides, Urza can teach me, maybe?" I looked away, trying to sort through my own thoughts. "One of the biggest concerns I have is the way Phyrexian corruption will interact with White Mana. It perverts good into evil, but what if it doesn't encounter pure goodness? What if it encounters a cold intelligence that rejects Phyrexia as unnecessarily inefficient, or a heated rage that would cleanse away such heresy? There's so much that could be a better buffer for angels to fight from than the pure White that you have right now!"

"You have many grand ideas," Serra giggled softly. "But can you actually achieve them? How is that industrialization going, by the way?"

My expression fell at that. "Eh… better than expected, worse than I had hoped? I admit, I knew less than I wish I did, but Selenia only has one hundred humans on her island, and Reya only ten times that number! Even if we multiply that, it's still too small, we need… we need more time." I sighed.

"So Radiant had a point about that then?" Serra smiled. Was she teasing me?

I growled at the sound of that angel's name. Lately, she would take every opportunity to ask me about my progress, knowing fully and well that I wasn't doing well on the task I had chosen. "It's just that I thought we'd have more people. You know, my world had nearly seven billion people?"

"S-Seven _billion?_" Serra stuttered. It was the first time I had seen her eyes widen in surprise like that, but I was so caught up in my own rant that I didn't notice.

"Yeah, the country I was born in is one of the largest, though morally poorest. The one I grew up in is the most powerful, but it wasn't the largest or the most populous. But…" I sighed at the thought of home. "It was a magical place, all things considered."

"I would imagine so, to produce someone like you," Serra laughed heartily.

"Stop, you're making me blush!" I replied with amusement.

We laughed, and drank more cheap tea. And then we nibbled on biscuits. The only kinds of biscuits the humans made here in this Realm were a sort of cookie that was in the shape of Serra's religion symbols covered in a sort of weird, coarse sugar on it that was sort of yellowish. It wasn't as good as the stuff back home, but it went decently with some nice tea.

"So how are your studies coming along then?" Serra added lightheartedly. "I hear Urza has been rather strict with you, and so have your other teachers. Something about you playing with baubles?"

I rolled my eyes. "I was just making some gems, you know? You just taught me how to create lands and the Mana Lines in them, so I thought, why not make a gem that has a Mana Line in it?"

Serra looked worried, "I didn't see or hear any explosion, what happened?"

"That's… I didn't mess up anything, isn't that good enough?" I remarked.

"That isn't reassuring. Do you remember your last experiment?" Serra looked at me with lidded eyes.

"Hey!" I crossed my arms and found myself starting to pout before I stopped myself. "You said you liked Serenity Prime!"

"I do, I do," Serra patted my arm soothingly. "But you did almost explode yourself out of existence."

_The best sort of explosions._ Of course, I didn't say anything and just nodded. I couldn't argue against her when I knew I was in the wrong! "Alright, well, I think I got around to making small trinkets to channel bits and pieces of Mana now."

Serra's eyebrows furrowed, "Really?"

"Yeah, it's not as hard as I thought it would be. Sort of like a solid-state drive for magic, you know? Except I haven't tried it on anything large yet, so the largest explosion only blow up in my face," then I realized what I just said. "Oh, damn it."

"I think I should peek in on your studies and your free time more often, from now on," Serra said sardonically with a hint of jape. "I see that some of those explosions left some soot in your hair."

"Fine, whatever," I rolled my eyes. Gah. Sometimes, just sometimes, when I interacted with Serra, I would fall back on what I would do when I talked with my mother. It wasn't that good of a response, but old habits die hard when I stopped paying attention or when I was utterly relaxed, like I was now, with tea. _Hmph! It's not like I was a mad scientist from Girl Genius with that sort of Spark or something, Serra!_

"What else have you been working on?" Serra leaned in and rested her chest against the edge of the table.

I looked at her enviously before replying, "You know I learned about making lands. Well, Urza has been teaching me how to make other sorts of artifacts, semi-sentient ones for war that he used in his war, and of the ones he saw in Phyrexia."

"You didn't actually build any, did you?" Serra looked concerned again.

"No, no," I reassured her. "All I did was look at the designs. Most of what they had were inefficient to the point where it would only work because of the existence of magic, sometimes. And those Phyrexian models, well, they are really extravagant, from what I can see."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah," I nodded. "They've reached a point where they had so many, and are so advanced in artifice, that they removed a vast majority of functions and efficiency for the sake of evilness or cruelty. I didn't even think a sane person would do that, but it looked like something intentional in their designs. But they are still certainly deadly enough to kill pretty much anything."

Serra looked uncomfortable. "If you weren't building that, then what have you been working on?"

"Ah…" I scratched my cheek. "You know, there's a saying back home."

"Yes?"

"Yeah, it's called 'it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission'."

Serra stared at me for what seemed like an hour. Then she asked quietly, "What did you do?"

"Eh… I mean…"

"What did you do this time?" She asked again, firmer and looking directly at me in the eyes.

I turned my glaze down at the surface of my steaming tea and muttered almost inaudibly soft, "I sort of, maybe, kind of already made a Mana Line in a plane within your plane. Perhaps?"

Serra stared at me for a moment. Then she shook her head and started _laughing_. "Oh, my Little Lady. What will I do with you?"

"You aren't mad?"

"Of course I am upset," Serra stopped laughing abruptly. "But I cannot stop you and you have your heart in the right place. I still wish you had come to me about this beforehand, though."

I let out a sigh of relief.

"… Of course, this doesn't mean you're 'off the hook', as you say," Serra smirked. "I believe such a thing would require some kind of punishment, no?"

"Eh… hehe?" I giggled nervously and shrank into myself.

Serra smiled calmly, but I felt like she was looming over me. She took a sip of her tea, before saying, "Little Lady, why don't you give me a tour of this little plane you have made. How big is it?"

"Uhm… Not that small?" I looked out at the endless dawn that was the skyline, and pointed upwards. "Do you see that up there?"

Serra looked up, and her eyebrows rose to her hairline. "Is that a moon, Little Lady?"

At this point, I couldn't help but intone a rather classic and cheesy line. "That's no moon…" I fought to keep a smile off of my face. "It's a space station!"

"A space… station…? What is… no, never mind that," Serra frowned at me before looking up at it again. "But it is too big, it is… almost as large as a small plane…"

"Don't worry! I've got a good feeling about this," I stood up and straightened my skirt. Then I reached out to hold Serra's hand, pulling her up as well. "Why don't I take you there for you to see? I made it in by tying two Mana Lines, one of Red and one of Blue."

Serra frowned, "Is that safe…? How is it that I had not noticed it?"

I felt my smile grow larger, "Ah, but the properties of Blue Mana! You've already taught me how to enchant and bless things, it's only the size that is a difference! With a whole, albeit small, Mana Line, I tied a pretty powerful, if crude, enchantment to it. You see, there's a story that I read about before, where there was a spell that hid a place, keeping it utterly safe as the location was unknowable, impossible to all senses and detection, as long as its keeper does not reveal its secret. The place is only visible to those that the secret is trusted, like I just trusted you with it."

"That is quite amazing," she muttered. "But it looks… untamed."

I looked up at the giant blue and red orb in the sky, swirling around as if it were a large, glass marble with two opposing liquids inside. She was right about it being untamed. The Red and Blue Mana clashed with each other. Furious storms of enormous magnitudes have been transforming the surface of the little moon into either volcanic wastelands littered with active volcanos or frozen wastelands veiled in impassible blizzards. I shrugged at her with an almost careless smile.

"Well, I was thinking about making some angels for that. So, do you think we could get on with today's lesson, and maybe postpone that tour you wanted? It would be rather… important, don't you think?" I attacked with puppy eyes. Serra seemed to waver for a moment, but then I leaned in, clasped my hands and whimpered.

It was super effective.


	15. a girl surprises Urza

"This is a mess," Urza remarked as he glared down at my latest creation. I had thought it a good idea to bring him in on this at the time to see how he would improve it.

We stood atop one of the larger flying devices I crafted under Urza, because the travel distance between Serra's Sanctum and my moon was surprisingly large. It was a sort of a flying vessel, with three, main semi-circle shaped wings flapping on each side. From the outside, it looked like some sort of big fish, while on the inside I had tried to make it look as alike to what I remembered of those spaceships from the new reboot of the Star Trek films as I could. There was an inner deck and bridge which I could command the vessel from, but we were standing on the outer deck, which looked more like the deck of a British Sloop-of-War. I had a captain's jacket, with long, silver tassels and everything. I thought it was great, at first.

Urza frowned down at my new starbase. "And it is too large. Even the entire population of Serra's Realm would need but a small patch of it to make a refuge. But if they escaped here now, the weather would destroy any attempts at settling."

"Which is why I'm going to make some angels," I replied with false cheer. "Or try to change it with magic."

Urza turned away and studied me, "You assume magic can solve all your problems."

I shrugged, "Well, why not? It's called magic for a reason, right? And this is for a good cause…"

"Good cause or not, you are not using it with wisdom," Urza retorted. For some reason, he had a haunted look on his face. He frowned and looked at me, but I felt like he was looking into my soul. It was the haunted look of a soldier after a war. "But I see you used it intelligently," he allowed. "Why are the two Lines tangled like that?"

"Oh, well, I wanted the whole mini-Plane to have even amounts of both Red and Blue Mana, you know?" But that was a silly reason, even if I did do it partly for the aesthetics. So I added, "But if you look for the nodes, or knots, where Mana is most easily accessed, I was thinking of building things there."

"There must be hundreds," Urza muttered.

"Well, it's actually 3600 knots to be exact," I replied. "It's spread pretty evenly, you know? It's a sort of defense grid, because with those tangles, I can make the whole thing move around like a rubric's cube. Or a rubric's sphere, but I've never seen one of those before."

Urza paced back to his seat and pondered on this, but then he asked, "I can guess what a 'mini-Plane' might mean, but what is a rubric's cube?"

"It's a…" I frowned. "I'm not good at explaining it. It's a sort of toy puzzle we give to children. Here, I'll make one."

As it turned out, Urza's genius was not understated. He figured out the pattern behind the rubric's cube in a few minutes after completing his first trial. After that, he could solve it in under a few seconds no matter how I twisted it. Well, once someone got it, they got it, but this was somewhat depressing.

I remembered having spent what was like weeks practicing so that I could compete with some of the children back when I was in middle school. So I grumbled, "It's… that's not impressive or something, hmph!"

Urza snorted lazily. "I have encountered something similar before, a long time ago, when my…" He stopped talking, and looked into the distance again. "Never mind."

"… So," I tried again. "How would you do it then, if you were going to fix this whole, ah, mess? Not that I think it's a mess or anything."

"First, I should ask, why did you not have a White Mana Line here?"

"It's because Serra already… I already… oh." I paused. If this was a plane of its own, then it wouldn't have a White Mana Line. I had drawn the Red and Blue Mana out first, before creating the actual moon-sized plane. However, to add onto it now would be… difficult.

"Yes, 'oh'. The addition of a White Mana Line would have been difficult, but it would have had a more desirable result." Urza began to write unintelligible notes in one of the tomes he brought with him.

I thought about it and asked, "Couldn't I add it now?"

"If it were so easy, student." Urza sighed and placed down his quill before rubbing the bridge of his nose. "If any Planeswalker could do it, then none of them would need to leave their own plane for more power, would they?"

"What if… what if I wrapped another plane around it, like a sort of atmosphere?"

Urza gave me a look that told me I was being stupid. "Then how will your grand illusion protect this plane? It is a rather genius idea, to have a property of making something impossible to know if it was not given. Where did you learn such a spell?"

"I read it in a book?" I replied just on the edge of sarcasm.

"There's no need to be snide." Urza went back to writing.

"Alright, alright," I gestured hastily. "I just wanted it to happen, so I brute-forced it with a lot of power. It worked fine, didn't it?"

Urza looked at me, and then looked down at my moon. Then he turned back to me with slightly widened eyes. "How is it that you have not exploded yet?"

"I have," I thought it was obvious. Sure, this method of learning magic was crude and most likely inefficient, but there was little to go on since Urza specialized in Artifacts and Serra specialized in Creation. I learned a little of both subjects from both of them, but they didn't know a lot of what I wanted to know. "I just got better."

Urza frowned. "You seem to see the world differently from what most of the mages I know would. That has helped you in your endeavors, but you should be more careful. Has Serra told you of the damage you have done to Serra's Realm?"

I felt my brow knot up, "What… _damage?_ No one told me anything."

"Because you still know only so much," Urza's frown deepened. He pointed up at Serra's Sanctum. Because we were in my moon's orbit, the Sanctum looked upside down to us. "Look, feel, and see."

I reached out with my consciousness, sight beyond sight flowing from my fingertips in an invisible, nigh-instantaneous grasp. Energy of the Outside coursed through me and I felt my own frown deepen. "But it looks the same as it always has been."

"Did you study it as a whole before your silver golem?" Urza asked rhetorically. Of course, he knew I only studied a piece of it. I was too eager to create something then that I didn't stop and learn everything they had to teach me. "I have been learning much of this plane. It is a work of wonders, something even only a few Planeswalkers could achieve. Do you know why that is?"

"… No."

"I would list Serra's expertise, but it is her effort and willpower that built this world from nothing." Urza stroked his beard as our ship moved closer towards my moon. We could see the large, city-swallowing hurricanes on its surface now. "I believe most would scoff at being 'hardworking' as the trait that would lead to such great power, but that and her endurance, are what keeps this plane working."

_Well, yeah, she's a Hufflepuff. This isn't news to me! _I waved a hand and steered the ship closer, until we were just above the eye of the storm. "So you're saying I can't create a Mana Line? I already did!"

"Size and power matter greatly," Urza retorted. "The power of Serra's White Mana Line could support a host of a hundred million angels, if she chose to push it to its limits. These would be angels who each could have powers beyond mortal comprehension, and each manifested fully. A single one could devastate a whole plane, could you say the same for your Mana Lines?"

"… No."

"Of course not," Urza nodded. He then added, "But the damage, it is as a portion of the Mana Line has been eaten away. It cannot fathom what happened to it other than that it was destroyed in your foolish attempt."

I winced.

"Be thankful it was not a large portion, or this plane would have already started unwinding," Urza warned.

I perked, "If it's not a big portion… I mean, is there a way to heal it?"

"In time, in hundreds of years," Urza replied. "It will mend on its own, as long as Serra maintains this Realm. Should she wish it, or should someone of equal ability wish it, it could be fixed, in a few years."

I fell silent at that. "Did… did I hurt her?"

"Her?"

"Serra, I mean."

Urza closed his notebook and turned towards me, the seriousness of his expression was amplified. He was usually serious, but now he was more so. It made him appear more defined, and deadly. "She would not want you to know. It is a personal matter. Should my Xantcha have done the same, I would have done differently, but I understand Serra's reasons. Do you?"

I sat down. My legs were too wobbly for some reason to stand. I rested my head in my palms. I didn't want to look at anything or see anything. I just wanted to go dig a hole and then burrow inside it. "I think I do," I replied at last.

"Then that is enough," Urza nodded. "I will help you where I can, in the matters of artifice, but you seem to have grasped the principles of tinkering well enough." He looked away and into the dawn. "I was… lucky… to have arrived in this plane. It is a good place."

I stayed silent.

"I regret having to bring the powers of the enemy down on it, and were things different, I would have…" He trailed off and looked down at his hands. I thought I might have seen a tear in his eyes, but there was nothing but dryness there. He clenched his hands into fists. They were shaking, and his knuckles were utterly white. "If things were different…"

"Well," I tried to steer him away from angst again. "You didn't have a good look at my Red and Blue Mana Lines yet, did you?"

Urza looked up. "I had, they were small, but still far too large for such a small plane, if it were even one. They are still large enough for whole worlds… an entire universe, even."

I coughed into my hands. "I never noticed the change, but I guess I wasn't looking for Mana Line sizes. They still look mostly the same to me, unless the difference was as large as the one between Serra's and mine. Even then…"

"That is because of your inexperience." He paused and then added, "You should Walk with me, someday. A young Planeswalker has much to learn before returning home."

"Ah… thanks, but that wasn't what I was going to talk about," I scratched the back of my head.

Urza stopped. He spun around and grabbed me by my shoulders, "What did you do? What did you do _this time_?"

"… You know how I asked about making angels, right?" I looked away. His glare was really intense. "See, I thought if they were just normal angels, then they might have a problem with the weather, you know? And, well, I thought Serenity was a bit lonely by herself, and only her two daughters."

Urza spun around so quickly, I nearly fell out of my seat. He squinted down at my moon, and I could feel his senses feeling for the Mana Lines. "… You… what…?"

"Oh! Uh. Well!" I perked up. "They should be coming about now!"

A small explosion occurred at the center of the hurricane. It was a sonic boom, heralding the arrival of two angelic figures. Both were clasped in silver armor, with white, tentacle-shaped lights trailing behind them that looked reminiscent of wings. As they approached, Urza saw one had fiery hair, tied back, but as if it were actually lit with orange flames. The other was half the size of the first, but its eyes were glowing with a blue light so brightly he had to turn away. They stopped moving so quickly and circled the vessel for a moment, before landing before us.

"Hey, Mom," the fire-head angel waved casually.

The other, shorter angel nodded to Urza before bowing a good ten-degrees to me. "Mother."

"Right then, I suppose introductions are required now, huh?" I smirked at the flabbergast expression on Urza's face.

He turned towards me, as if I were some sort of horrifying creature, but he didn't say anything. He just gapped. That was a good sign, probably!

"Girls, this is Urza, one of my teachers and elders." I patted Urza on the shoulder. He didn't even throw me off this time! Progress! "Urza, this is Liberty and this is Justice." I pointed at my fiery angel and my icy angel respectively. "Oh, and on that note, could you help me see how we can make sure my plane doesn't erode itself and unravel? That might be important too."

_Oh, the look on Urza's face_…


	16. a cheesy girl cheeses

It had not taken even a single day to pass before Urza practically dragged Serra over to me. _So this is the straw that broke the camel's back_. I knew it was coming, but I had learned from my mistakes. There were so many things I wanted to complain about, but they would not hear of it.

So we ended up on my ship again, because I had made it a sort of home away from home away from home. The idea of using solid diamond structures—hedrons, as Urza called them in his Artificer jargon—turned out to be a good one. Since I had already lined the ship with them and layered several enchantments on them, the ship's insides looked almost too out of place. Many of these enchantments were small blessings, like an automatic light or a simple artifact that replicates food from ambient Mana. However, the combined total was really starting to look indistinguishable from advanced technology. There were so many ways to combine artifacts and magic, I was starting wonder why Urza never did any of it! _It couldn't just be because he never had the need for them, could it?_

Serra and Urza had showed up in the morning, or what passed for morning in this universe of constant dawn and dusk. I had parked my ship next to Reya's land the previous day, so I was rather easy to find. I knew they were coming too, so I thought I might as well weather their scolding than to put it off. It was like peeling off a band-aide, wasn't it?

"I know what you're here for," I said when I came out to greet them on the upper deck. "Come on below and I will make us some tea."

"There is no need for that," Urza replied with a wave. "We will be quick."

I rolled my eyes at that. "I think this visit will be anything but quick, sir."

He was about to retort, but Serra beat him to it. "It is alright. I have grown fond of your tea, it is rather different from what other humans could make. Besides, neither of us are in any hurry, are we?"

Urza sighed and relented silently.

We arrived in a small conference room. I had built it as a sort of war room at the time, but I've never had to use it until now. Even still, we were not using it for the purpose that it was built. There was a long table in the center of the room that could seat twelve people comfortably around it. It was made from what I remembered to be mahogany.

I took a moment to savor the scent of the room and run a finger around the polished edge of the wooden table. Seeing my friends and teachers taking their seats, I broke out my tea cups and smiled. It wasn't even a forced smile; I genuinely liked both of them.

"Alright, Urza likes the bitter Oolong with a drop of honey and Serra likes Chrysanthemum tea with two sugars, right? Right then, I'll just have something like Serra's then." I mostly talked to myself when I made the tea; I knew what they wanted already anyway.

"Is this really necessary? I have much to work on," Urza grumbled under his breath. But at the same time, he drank his tea the moment I placed the cup before him. He drank slowly too, and I thought he was enjoying it.

"Right, so we have a lot to talk about, don't we?" I grabbed a notepad and a pen.

I was more comfortable with typing things out, but I doubt they would take well to that. Besides, I got to draw little doodles in the corners of my notes if I wrote like this. I've always liked drawing doodles.

"Urza and I think that you need to pace yourself, Little Lady. This is also a social visit, I hope," Serra said while smiling behind her steaming cup. "Oh, that's hot."

"Yeah, careful not to burn your tongue there." We shared a small chortle.

"You need to be more responsible. You need to be watched until you are more experienced," Urza muttered to me. He wasn't looking at me, but at my notes for some reason.

I looked down and breathed a mental sigh of relief. I hadn't drawn any silly doodles on my notes yet. "You want to have me watched?" I frowned feeling a tad indignant.

"You know that you are already watched over, like all things, here in my Realm. But that is not what Urza means." Serra paused and asked, "What have Lady Reya and Lady Selenia been doing lately? They seem to never be in your presence."

"We still hang out!" I protested. "It's just that the jobs I gave them were a bit harder than they're used to. Artists aren't meant to be cooped up in factories, you know?"

"Factories? Were they not built?" Serra asked carefully.

"You know how mages all need years and years of training to learn their own specialized brand of magic? Well, why not dispense of that?" I asked rhetorically. "So I've got them and their people working on ways to make magic easily maintained and accessible to everyone. We had to break down a lot of spells, which took more time than I thought, but I think we got a prototype that works in anyone's hands. It's taking a while to go into production though, and the ammunition… Eh… There's quite a few problems, the least of which is the main factory."

As I trailed off Urza pursed his lips and set down his cup. He crossed his arms and said more as a statement than a question, "You're still going to work on that project."

"… Yeah." I felt heat growing at the base of my neck.

"What are you talking about?" Serra asked.

"I wanted to make Von Neumann machines. That is artifacts that are also creatures, who are capable of creating vast numbers of themselves very quickly. This way, at least Phyrexia can't drown us in numbers. Urza shot it down a while back, but that was because he said they were too weak individually to matter. So why not make them individually stronger?" I asked.

"This sounds dangerously like what Phyrexia may have originally been intended for," Urza remarked.

"I think that is a problem. However, what is to become of my Realm if my people are drowned out by these… machines? They would be neither angel nor human. Where will their faith and goodness be?" Serra said with nearly frantic tone. She sounded truly worried about this idea, or just my ideas in general.

I found myself leaning back tiredly. "It's not a perfect scenario, and I'm still having problems with what sort of artifact-creature I want to make. So there's a long way to go, and I've already debated with both Selenia and Reya on philosophy of this sort of thing for days or weeks. It's one thing to be planning a battle," I added tiredly. "It's another to be discussing the purpose of weapons to two angels who are hippies at heart."

Serra blinked and turned to Urza. She mouthed silently, "Hippies?"

Urza shrugged.

Serra sighed, and an awkward silence fell over the room. We stared down at our reflections in our tea, up at the illuminated ceiling, or just away at the white, glass-like walls.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "Have you looked at my moon yet, Serra? In depth, I mean."

"Yes. Actually, I have," she replied. "Don't let Urza's grumbling confuse you, my dear student. It is a magnificent piece of work. But you suffused too much Mana into your creation."

"But isn't more energy better?" I asked curiously.

"There is a limit," Serra replied carefully. "When your Mana Lines are powerful enough to ignite and burn out many stars, it reaches a point where you cannot contain it in such a small plane. You will need to expand it, or tether the powers better to the plane. With so many knots, there are so many points where Mana manifest. Such gathering of ambient power deteriorate your Plane very quickly."

"How bad is it? How long do I have before I need to fix it?" I asked quickly. My tea was left to a side, getting cold.

"Perhaps a year," Serra replied candidly.

"Oh. Then I'd best start fixing it," I muttered.

"That would be for the best, and that is also why we are here. We can offer you aide, but only if you will accept it, Little Lady. You have not been heeding our advice for some time," Serra intoned.

Urza snorted. "Heeding our advice? It might as well have passed from one ear to the other. That is a curious creation though, in your hands. What is it?"

"A ball-point pen, sir," I replied. Then I rolled it over to his side of the table.

Urza's eyes lit up like a child's eyes in a candy store. He held it up and studied it. "The ink, the point… I'd like to make some copies of this."

"Suit yourself," I replied. "You'll probably like it more than using quills."

"We are getting off topic here," Serra interrupted.

"Right, well, you can't leave because of the damage the girl did making her first golem. She doesn't have the experience needed and I still need to heal," Urza ticked off. "How do you expect to fix a problem that could easily destroy both planes?"

Serra frowned, but she was silent.

I knew she was diligent and determined when she needed to be, but seeing them sit side by side, I saw Urza dwarf Serra's intellect. It felt horrible to see, and even worse to realize. But a thought occurred to me, so I wondered aloud, "Can we put that power to use, so it doesn't blow up?"

"What do you suggest, student? There is much power there, enough to equal a thousand exploding stars," Urza stated with a frown.

_That has to be an exaggeration. _I denied mentally to myself. _Urza is like a science fiction author, he probably doesn't have a sense for scale. Yeah, that has to be it._

"Did you think bending the forces of reality to your whims would result in less power?" Urza asked. He sounded actually curious. "It is possible, but your intersected Mana Lines leave no spot of your plane untouched. They may be less powerful than Serra's Mana Line, but they aren't that much less powerful."

"But… but… Serra's Realm is barely a single world!" I protested.

Serra laughed at this heartily. "But my dear student, do you know what it means to create a work that is truly an _infinite_ sky?"

I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. I tried to stammer out something, _anything_. But all I could do was whine, "But then why didn't Urza make something like this and blow it up in Phyrexia?"

"How long did it take you to create even the first sliver of your Mana Line?" Urza asked. He sounded almost amused now.

"A month of just sitting there and focusing?" I asked. Then I heard what I said. "Oh. I can see why this could have problems. But you could still do it, couldn't you?"

"No, I don't think I can," said Urza.

"You're more powerful and more skilled than me, of course you can," I said with a laugh. But seeing Urza's seriousness, I stopped and asked, "Couldn't you?"

Urza stared down at his hands. They were clenched together so tightly that if he were holding my tea cup, it would have been crushed to dust. "Do you know what one of the main limitations of Planeswalkers is, girl? It is we are limited by our beliefs and our natures. Even if we could change our inherent selves, we won't, because then we would be, by any definition, someone else. We are not ephemeral creatures that are capable of growth and change in that way, we are much, much more than that. But at the same time, we are also less."

"The power of belief is a truly powerful force, Little Lady. My faithful know this, and I draw on their faith for support. It more than meets my needs," Serra added.

"I… but…" I choked. One part of me wanted them to be telling the truth. I wanted to be special and powerful. But a small, rebellious voice at the back of my head protested and told me that Urza might be lying to me. Maybe he was just trying to teach me a lesson? Maybe they were just trying to curb my growth? Maybe, maybe…

"It is a good thing, don't mistake that. We might be upset with your reckless ways, but we see that you are creative. You have a dangerous streak, but it will pass as soon as you become more experienced," Serra said.

"Well, yeah, I didn't blow up when I made Justice and Liberty," I grumbled.

"They have turned out well," Serra added with a smile. "Though I have wondered why their wings look like they are made of tendrils of light. It does not look like the natural beams of the sun."

"It's based off of a… story from home," I said simply. Then I turned my attention back to the reason they were here. "Is it possible to use the power of my Mana Lines to tie a third Mana Line in there?"

Urza frowned. "That would be dangerous, but possible. Of course, what you gain from all three would be diminished greatly, but it is possible. But to attempt it when both available Mana Lines are already so volatile… it could do more harm than good."

"Oh," I shivered. I probably would have had nightmares about killing everyone accidentally, if I could still dream.

"We will need to work towards a solution," Serra added, "but there is no need to reach a decision immediately. We shall work together on this, alright, Little Lady?"

I nodded numbly. "Yeah, I get it."

"Now then, this was good tea," Urza remarked as he stood up. "But I think I'm about full now."

"Oh, wait, before you go," I said, stopping them in their tracks. "There's something else I would like to have your help with, if that's not too much trouble. Urza in particular, at this point anyway."

Urza blinked. "Go on."

"See, I was thinking about a way to make individuals more powerful, and I remembered seeing an artifact a long time ago that would work wonderfully as a power source," I said with a smile. "Have you heard of the 'Sol Ring'?" The look on Urza's face when I mentioned it told me all I needed to know.

_If I can't cheat this way, then I'm going to cheese that way!_ I thought with a growing smile.


	17. a dumb girl is confronted

It looked like a moon, it orbited like a moon, and it felt like a moon. But was my plane just a moon? Even though it was like Earth's Moon physically, it had an atmosphere of fire, storm and dozens of deadly chemicals that I doubted even Slivers could survive here. And while it was in the sky of Serra's Realm, it was a plane onto itself. This was a boon to both of us, because it meant that none of the hazardous byproducts of the clashing Red and Blue Mana would just leak into Serra's Realm. The only difference between the two planes' 'distance' and any other planes' was simply that were I to go from one to the other, I would not need to step Outside.

Above us now, Serra was weaving a complicated spell. She was doing it from the other side of the planar barrier, and already I could see light pouring into my works. The acidic clouds of black and yellow were fading, leaving only a near-blinding light of the sun. The poison in the air cleansed and the temperature seemed to settle, for the moment.

But Urza and I were not there to watch this happen. We were at the center of my plane. I had intended to make this my own starbase with world-destroy capabilities. It would be gruesomely horrifying to Serra to contemplate that, so I had put creating such a large powered weapon off. Still, the center was a core of power. I had promised no more secrets, so I had taken Urza here. It was a stadium as large as the Bird's Nest in Beijing, but its shape was completely spherical and it was lined with golden, crystalline structures. In the center of that was a giant sphere glowing with white light, a million strands of light twisting and turning to link with the thousands of crystals that lined these walls. They pulsed slowly with the Mana running through them, like this plane's heart beating at its center. The enormous chamber was purposely not logical. It was one of non-Euclidean geometry, with tens of thousands of crystal stairways leading to different doors. And each of these doors led to a shortcut, a sort of portal or a wormhole, that would go to another part of my plane. I had intended this place to be my sanctum, and I had based it off of Serra's Sanctum. For ephemeral creatures however, the very twist nature of this place would bring onto them headaches and mental sickness. If it had originally done so to me the first time I stepped into it, I was certain it would do the same to others.

"What is this place?" Urza whispered. He looked around so quickly, I thought his neck might snap.

"It is my Sanctum," I replied. "If Serra has a Sanctum from where she can see everything in the infinite of the Realm, then I have a place where I can be everywhere in my plane. I know it's not extravagant like her place, but… well, no more secrets, right?"

"Indeed? But what is the purpose of this place? I could not even feel it while we were outside," Urza asked.

"I couldn't just make one Secret Keeping Enchantment, could I? What if someone got into one of them? They would still need this other secret. I'm going to fill the plane above with creatures, so it will not be a secret for much longer, I think." I added, "Besides, this is supposed to be where all the Mana is gathered, like a central knot."

"And you think to use it as a source of power?" Urza asked with an eyebrow raised in surprise.

I shrugged. "Well, I can't make a Sol Ring factory if I had to be there all the time for it to operate, could I?" I asked.

"That is dangerous," Urza replied. "If such knowledge were to slip into the enemy's hands…"

"We'll just have to keep that a secret then, shouldn't we? Or we out-produce them to a point where they are dwarfed by our power!" I added with a grin.

Urza frowned. "It would not work with the enemy. You know this."

"But…"

"I will tell you now, I do not trust you, student, as I once did. Serra may trust you on the basis that you bore your soul to her. She knows your character, but I do not," He said roughly. Seeing me attempt to reply, he raised a hand. "But I do not require you to show me everything about you. I do not need to be inside you, nor do I want to. If you attempt to create something like this, I want to be a part of it, if only to keep you from making further mistakes."

_That's a nice way of saying I'm incompetent_, I thought. "Then how can I get you to trust me again?" I asked. I didn't want to see this side of him. It was intimidating… and I desperately wanted him to never see the way my hands were shaking behind my back. Fear crept on me, and tears were just around the corner.

"You will have to earn my trust the hard way," Urza answered softly. "You will have to _earn_ it."

"I see."

"You will in time. Perhaps you will understand enough to not deceive those who have given you their trust. You still do not understand what you have done, do you? Even with this enchantment hiding your plane, _other Planeswalkers can feel the power of your Mana Lines_. There is a reason why many Walk, they seek new sources of Mana. They are lazy and cannot make power for themselves, so they find other means. In the years to come, you shall see many mingling amongst your people, grasping for the scraps of this plane," Urza growled menacingly as he paced around the planar core. One moment, he was standing before me, and in the next he was hanging upside down above me. "The world here is strange, and I find myself interested. How did you think of this place?"

"It's based off of one of the stories I heard as a child," I replied, but there was no excitement in my voice. I was reliving that feeling of wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

"Fine. This can't be all that you wanted me to see however," Urza said, turning back to me. "And while it is fascinating that you tied the Mana Lines so many times that I could not feel this center. So what else did you want?"

"There is an artifact that I want to make, to pair up with the Sol Rings," I said. "I remember it being called an 'Isochron Scepter'."

"I have not heard of such a thing," Urza replied, crossing his arms.

"The principle behind it is pretty simple, it copies a spell that is imprinted onto it at its creation. Then it can be activated to reuse that spell as many times as necessary," I said. "I think it would go well with a Sol Ring. With both, even the weakest mortal could stand a chance."

Urza snorted. "Perhaps, but perhaps not, against most powerful beings. Still, if every man, woman, and child could shoot one Fireball, then that would even the odds against the enemy's numbers slightly."

I was still feeling chastised, but hearing his approval of this plan was great for my self-esteem. It had not occurred to me to ask them what _they_ have done in preparation however. A part of me still thought they were 'destined' to fail, but the larger part of my mind thought differently. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I found myself trusting them in that way. Even if I kept some things from Serra and Urza, I had an unwavering trust for their judgment. It was only when I was alone and pondering on this myself months later, that I had realized this…

While Serra stabilized my plane temporarily, Urza and I drew out plans for factories. Urza found the idea of Isochron Scepters humorous. "Why make a scepter that can only use one spell? Just make a ring for it," He had said.

There were three types of production lines I wanted: one for Sol Rings, one for Isochron Rings, and a last for Clockwork Gnomes. I was going to make Myr, but I thought better of it. Those creatures would take me too long to create. Clockwork Gnomes were simple, and Urza already knew how to make them. They would be intelligent, but only two steps above canines. They would orders and prosper, but with this limited intellect, their growth would be slow. I thought that there was no need to expend great resources on them and no need for higher intellect in them, since they would come in much greater numbers. But we would see.

Going back up to thank Serra was a short affair, but she left me with some gifts. Not that I didn't appreciate her help. It was just that this was her rather transparent way of showing that I messed up too. It was still a lot gentler than Urza directly confronting me, but I didn't feel any better for either. That was the point though…

"I'm going to go eat dinner, don't follow me," I said to Selenia. She was that 'gift' Serra left, so to speak. And she was getting on my nerves.

"No," Selenia replied.

I sighed. After trying to escape from her in my bathroom and failing, I had come to the conclusion that she was like Radiant. She would take Serra's recommendation of watching over me as a duty and I was stuck with a babysitter. "Fine," I grumbled. "But you're not going to mess up my family dinners. Just… don't be such a stick in the mud."

She stayed silent about that, which was fine by me.

When I first created my three living creations, I was left puzzled. How did one act as a parent? How did one mother their children? I could barely remember what my mother did, other than that she did enough work for ten people and there was a lot of self-sacrifice along the way. Trying to think of my own mother left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling and I wanted to be able to do that for my children too.

But I wasn't ready! I didn't think about what these creations would be like, other than their capabilities and their power. The fact that they added the responsibility of teaching them was almost too much for me to bear. Every time I looked at them, I felt my knees go weak. The question that kept repeating itself in my head was the same, _what if they go bad?_ I just couldn't think of what to do to teach them, because there was just too much pressure. The task intimidated me too much…

Yet there they sat, mostly to accommodate my whims. I knew eating was something none of us needed to do. Sure, I made them to be able to eat and enjoy what they ate. But in truth it was just an inefficient use of our time. I just didn't know how to make them feel more human than to have these family meals. In essence, I was falling back on what I knew when I couldn't think of what to do. They seemed to take to it like children though, in the sense that they didn't know what else to do, but I thought they enjoyed my meals well enough.

It was a rather strange sight that greet Selenia and I when we arrived back on my ship. A silver giant sat beside two angels at a table that was clearly too small for them. The angels' wings were large enough to make them seem almost as large as Serenity, actually.

My fiery-haired angel, Liberty, perked up as she saw me, "Hey, mom! What's for dinner?"

As the others greeted me in their own way, I sat down and rubbed my palms together. "Well, tonight we're going to try something from my Dad's homeland. I don't really remember what it's called, but I think it's a Sichuan Hotpot. We can have some ice cream afterwards."

Serenity turned to Selenia and said, "You are one of Serra's angels, yes?"

"I am Lady Serra's follower," Selenia replied with a stoic nod. "You may call me Lady Selenia."

"Or just call her Selenia. That's fine too, right?" I asked.

She turned to me a glared.

"Hey, Selenia!" Liberty immediately wrapped an arm around the smaller angel. It was like watching a polar bear wrap an arm around an arctic fox: very amusing. Selenia immediately straightened and looked like she wanted to bolt out of the room. I thought that by this point, only the thought of a disappointed Serra kept her rooted to her seat. Liberty didn't seem to mind, but I thought it was probably because she wasn't very adept at reading body language yet. "It's great to meet you! You're the first of Serra's angels I've met!"

"_Lady _Serra cannot spare her followers to menial tasks. There is much work being done to prepare for the Phyrexian invasion," Selenia half-growled. How cute, she was trying to be serious!

"Sure, sure, we're all doing that. Hey, can you tell me about your duties? What do you do for Serra anyway?" Liberty asked.

After I finished creating our dinner, I turned to Justice, my cooler-headed angelic daughter, and Serenity as the other two continued their discussion. Well, it was a one-sided discussion, because Selenia could barely say a word as Liberty became more and more excited to meet someone new. "So, how was your day today?" I asked lightly.

"It was well, Mother," Serenity replied first. "I studied Lady Serra's spell. It is a lingering enchantment, and I believe I have observed enough to cast it with greater efficiency on a smaller scale."

"That was quick," I remarked, while blinking in surprise.

"Lady Serra was not created to be a computer with near unlimited processing power like we were, Mother," Justice supplied quietly. She was poking her beef with her chopsticks and looking at it as if it were some kind of eldritch tentacle.

"Yeah, I did that, didn't I?" I scratched the back of my head. I always did like those Star Trek computers.

"Why did you make us this way, Mother?" Justice asked quietly. She looked up, and her blue eyes felt like ice on my skin.

I shrugged and turned back to my food. "Parents want their children to be better than them. At least, that's what my parents were like, they wanted for me to have a better life than them. I want the same for you," I said. "Isn't that enough?"

"Our thinking speed seems much greater than just 'better', Mother," Justice persisted.

"But it is better, little sister. Mother spoke truth," Serenity interjected. "You should try this soup. It's rather salty and spicy, but it is delicious. All vegetable."

"Fine," Justice pouted.

"Now, come on. What did you do today, Justice?" I asked.

She looked up from her bowl with her cheeks bulging slightly. "I was making plans for creations, like Serenity Prime's children, Mother. I was hoping you would approve of them."

"Oh?" I blinked at that. Then I asked, "What did you have in mind?"

"Mother named me Justice, and sought for me to create magic of law. I do not think my creations need power or want power. They will be small, like so," Justice said. She placed her chopsticks on her bowl, and focused a drop of Blue and White Mana into her palm.

A second later, a small replica of herself awakened on her hand. It was small enough to be mistaken for a pixie, yet it still had those undeniably angelic tendrils for wings.

"Oh, how pretty!" I gasped.

The little faery-angel curtseyed before it flew up to Justice's shoulder and curled up. Then it seemed to fall asleep. "Is this acceptable, Mother? My children will keep law, but without temptations."

"Hm," I murmured with a finger tapping my chin. "You know, that sounds like you're only applying cold logic."

"Logic is what you made us for, Mother. It is only logical to need only apply logic. The law needs to be defined. It matters not good or bad, as long as they obey the law," Justice argued coolly.

"That's stupid," Liberty interrupted. She had finished her 'discussion' with Selenia, it looked like. I saw in the corner of my eyes that Selenia was leaning to a side and gasping as if she had been holding her breath this whole time.

"It is not!" Justice pouted.

"Is too!" Liberty shouted louder and crossed her arms. The fires of her hair seemed to grow.

"It's not stupid, you're stupid!" Justice's eyes glowed as if a blue furnace of a star was in her skull.

"Stop it, both of you," Serenity slapped both of them on the back of the head, immediately calming them down with an infusion of White Mana. "I'm trying to eat."

Both angels pouted and turned to me, with their eyes filled with tears. They both shouted at the same time, "Mom! Serenity hit me!"

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. _Where is that near-infinite processing power now?_ I just had to make them human along with all of that, hadn't I? I wanted to bang my head against the table. It seemed like every single dinner had an argument that ended up like this. Why did I want siblings, again? I tried to appease them, so I asked, "How about we have some ice cream?"

"Ice cream again?" Justice grumbled.

"I want hot chocolate!" Liberty added at the same time.

"Sometimes, I forget you're only a few weeks old," I said, rubbing my forehead as a headache that should have come did not come. "Look, Serenity was right, you both need to calm down. You're sisters, so be nice to each other. And Justice, you're right to an extent. I would agree that respect for the law is necessary, but there needs to be a limit. Besides, sometimes we need to judge it with a case-by-case basis." I paused, seeing all three daughters stop their complaining at last. "Well, we're just starting out. If we're doing something wrong, we can just change for the better. Anyway, what happened to Selenia?"

"I don't know!" Liberty shrugged as all eyes turned to her.

Selenia was in fetal position and rocking herself back and forth. She was muttering something that sounded like, "Lady Serra, Lady Serra, Lady Serra…" but it was hard to tell.

I turned back to the dinner tea. "How about we have some tea instead?"

"Yay!"


	18. a silly girl drinks tea

In the weeks that came and went, Reya's duchy changed greatly. Where there was once only a small manor beside a gallery of art and music surrounded by some stone hovels, there was now a small metropolis. The center of flying island was still her home, but it has become a large spherical structure that functioned as a castle, a stadium, and a studio all rolled into one. New apartments made from thick, white bricks surrounded her home, followed by a ring of factories and farms. It was quiet a mess, though from afar Reya's island looked like a Pokéball with a large button.

There were many thopters—artifact flying machines that seemed to magically defy physics in various ways—streaming around the island. But more importantly, there were many flowing in and out of it too.

I had dragged Selenia along to visit my angelic friend, whom I had not seen in over a week due to our increasingly busy schedules. At the top of her dome-like manor, Reya had an aviary that was a smaller version of Serra's. There, she placed a nice mahogany desk I made for her and made it her office as Lady and administrator of this land. We sat across from her, and all indulged in our tea even before we started talking.

Tea had become a new fad in Serra's Realm. I had introduced some of the tea plants, but Serra created some for her people too. The angels liked it simply because Serra enjoyed it, much like how they partook in choirs and painting for her sake. The mortals liked it, but I didn't know why. They even had an 'afternoon tea time' and a 'breakfast tea'! It was quite amazing how many things they came up with while I wasn't looking.

"What flavor is this?" I asked with my eyes alight with wonder. "I've never tasted this sort of tea. It's so light and yet so creamy and sweet at the same time!"

"If you would believe it, it is a blend that Lady Radiant created," Reya giggled.

I felt my eyebrows raise an inch. "That's… you're joking!"

"No, no," Reya replied with a smile. "I am not. Lady Radiant has become famous for her like of honey and creamy flavors. This 'Radiance' tea takes a while to grow, and it is rather infused with Mana. It's not easy to get, but thanks to you, I have plenty!"

Selenia and I both were taken back by Reya, but I recovered first. "What do mean? How did I help you?" I was away from the island for most of the time I was in the Realm!

"Well, do you see the ornithopters flying about? They all came from my factories. You were right about one thing, there are a lot of people who want to fight, but can't. Why, the people who have moved here from my neighbors alone already enlarged my demesne by ten times! It's been rather hectic around, compared to before…" Reya did look more frazzled than before. Her hair was not done so perfectly, and I noted the large stack of paperwork on her desk.

"But that does not explain how it helped you get tea," Selenia pointed out. "I think I want some too."

"Ah, but it does," Reya leaned back and wove her hands together above her chin, as if she were thinking deeply. She said, "While we don't use money—currency in the form of gold or silver coins for example—we do trade and so too do the mortals. It is something not mainly around because of the temptations involved, but it is used to reallocate our production, which has been growing. And since we have started making ornithopters, the commerce between our lands have grown greatly. Humans, as it turns out, really like to move around between islands. It's a rather strange problem that Lady Serra didn't seem to be troubled with, but… well…" She gestured to her stacks of paper work.

I patted her on the shoulder. "I think I understand. It's a good thing I hand those to my daughters, though," I added with a giggle.

Reya rolled her eyes at me before turning back to take a sip from her tea cup.

"Hey, it's been a while since I was last here, how's the music these days?" I asked suddenly. It had been a long time, and I have not yet sampled the music of the land. Perhaps it would be something different from what I was used to?

Reya's eyes twinkled, while Selenia groaned. Reya snorted in an unangelic-like way, turning to Selenia and saying, "The music is great. Don't list to Selenia. She's a, how did you put it? A stick in the mud? Yes, I think that's it. Why don't we go see what they are up to, there should still be a few people practicing their instruments. Do you want to go singing too?"

"Well, I always did like Karaoke…" I trailed off as we left.


	19. a distraught planeswalker scurries about

I was wondering about and admiring the new sights when something caught my interest. It was strange to have a faith-based industry. I meant it in the sense that every human who labored under Reya's guidance were firm believers of Serra, as if she was some kind of deity. The signs of differences to my own world ranged from subtle to outrageous. But it was easy to see where this extra effort came from; if the Christian God continually manifested Himself and answered any questions we had for him, wouldn't the humans native to my world been similar? But seeing them work so diligently, I wondered if this new influx of technology was solely brought by Urza and I, or if there were innovations amongst this populous too? It was hard to tell, but very interesting!

There was something setting me off. I was walking through a small plaza of a garden that lined the outside of one of the smaller artifice factories. It was a facility for making smaller clockwork machines, which were merely pieces of a larger whole to be made elsewhere. The building itself was a large, twisting spire made from three smaller spires. There were a few ornithopters flying about like little birds at the top. But it was not this building that set me off; there was something near it that smelled like a dying fire.

With my curiosity piqued, I started chasing this scent. It wasn't like an actual smell, because no one else seemed to think of it, and it wasn't something that was a produce of the factories. It tingled against the back of my neck, tickling my hairs like a fading ember. I felt it, and it felt… Red.

No one stopped to stare at me or questioned me as I walked around the facilities on Reya's duchy. Most of them didn't know who I was, and those who did thought of me as just another talented mage. _It is a good sort anonymity_, I noted. _I doubt they'd treat me this way if they knew the details of my relationship with Serra._

There were quite a few fanatics here. Thankfully, they were not the sort of fanatics that would go on witch burnings or crusades. Instead, Serra's faithful just preached so much that I would fall asleep from boredom just by being near them long enough. Still, they weren't simply preachers. Many of them were artists—sculptures, musicians, and painters—singing and showering praises on the wonders of the Goddess Serra. So to be able to bore a Planeswalker to sleep was no easy feat!

I found a befuddled girl standing at one of the entrances to the white spires. She had light, brown hair that was tied back in a simple braid and she wore light colored leather tunic and skirt. There was a knife sheathed at the small of her back, and she had a sort of emblem of Serra's on her belt buckle made from bronze. And she was currently looking up at the spire with her mouth hanging open.

Seeing her just staring upwards, I walked next to her casually. She didn't even notice me even when I was just a step beside her. "Hey, you. Where are you from?" I asked aloud.

The girl shook and she turned to me with large, round eyes. They were very blue with a hint of tears just around the corner. "W-What?" She stuttered. "I am from Dominaria. I came through my worship of the Goddess Serra. Didn't you?"

I blinked. "Oh. Right, sure. But you're different!" I smiled. "Why are you different?"

"Different?" She took a step backwards. "I-I don't know what you mean!"

I leaned back and studied her for a moment. Her forehead was covered in glistening sweat, and her feet began to shuffle. It was adorable, if I were honest about it. I wanted to hug the girl, but there was something that bugged me… "You're a mage, aren't you?" I asked at last.

She seemed to shrink into herself, "Y-Yes, I mean, a little?"

"How can you be 'a little' mage?" I asked.

"C-Can you please not tell anyone else?" She fiddled with the hem of her skirt nervously. Looking close, she had really nice skin, if a tad too pale.

I nodded. "Sure."

She looked about before turning to me. "I can only make lightning," She whispered. "I-I don't want to, honest! B-but…"

"Oh, that's all?" I patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. How about you show me what you can do?"

"H-Here?" She asked incredulously.

I looked about. Ah, if she did shoot prematurely or wildly, that would be a problem. But I had not met someone who used lightning before! It was certainly an application of Red Mana, which I saw only a tiny drop of in her. That explained the feeling of fire and how she stood out. But I never knew Serra brought others from Dominaria… though that would explain where so many of these humans came from. They were probably all followers of her faith! I grabbed the girl's hand and led her out of the city center. It was a short walk before we entered a sort of forested area, but she didn't struggle much. "Come on, show me!" I said excitedly.

"W-Well… alright…" She replied. Then dripping drops of Red Mana—so small that I could hardly see them—into her fingertips, tiny arcs of electricity ran down her arms. She paused for a second. "I-Is that enough?"

I pouted and replied rather pushily, "No! Do an actual spell! You do know a spell or two, right?"

"Y-Yes, of course!" She replied. Then she screwed her face up in concentration. It was also a cute expression, I noted, before I realized it was actually a large amount of Red Mana—enough to damage the area, if not herself.

I tugged on a drop of the Blue Mana from my ocean of power, just in case.

"T-This is the Lightning Bolt. I learned it from watching a wizard," She said. And then she let it loose with only a single crackle of power. It was a fast spell and any human would have been unable to see it before it hit.

But I wasn't a human, and I saw that it was flying towards the city. _Uh oh._ I waved my hand at it and the bolt of lightning arced back, striking a tree next to me. There was only ashes left, a moment later. I whistled in surprise. "That's something. Can you teach me?"

"T-Teach you? B-But I don't…" She whimpered.

I scratched the back of my head. She looked really frightened for some reason. "Ah. Well, sorry about that. What's your name?"

"I am T-Talia."

I grabbed one of her hands and shook it vigorously. She looked like she was shaking up and down from it, which was hilarious. Her little braid bobbed up and down with her too. "Well, greetings Talia. I'm one of the, ah, Lady Serra's students in magic, that's why I was interested. I think I got it from watching you though. It's rather uncontrollable, right?"

"Y-Yes," She agreed with an enthusiastic nod. Then she asked, wide-eyed, "Are you really one of the Goddess's students? Does the Goddess take students?"

"Well, how would her message be spread if she didn't have any students?" I asked. That would be common sense, right?

Talia thought differently though. "Her angels bring her message to mortals," She stated. Then she paused and looked at me with even wider eyes, if that was possible. "A-Are you an angel?"

I couldn't help myself—I cracked up. After a minute of laughing in her face and seeing her go redder and redder, I stopped myself. "Ah, that was too funny. I'm sorry, sorry! Don't cry!" I tried to sooth her. "No, I'm not an angel. I was a mortal too, you know? Anyway! It's good to meet you, where are you going?"

"I… I was going to join Lady Dawnbringer's manufactorium. The newest learnings from the Goddess are said to come from there," She muttered nervously. "You aren't going to stop me, are you? I wanted to see if they needed someone to tend their forge…"

I shrugged. "I don't know about forges, but good luck with joining up! I'm sure the factories are expanding, what with the war effort."

"War effort?" Talia asked in loudly with an 'Eep!' of surprise.

"They haven't told you?" I blinked. "Well, they will, I think. Or maybe you just haven't heard. There's a sort of an evil god of a machine empire who wants to kill everything, and he's probably going to invade here."

"That… sounds bad?" The little girl ventured.

"Yes, well! Good luck on getting a job! I need to leave, actually. I'm late already," I muttered, running away for my next meeting. Selenia was probably still waiting for me back at Reya's office. I was probably going to get a scolding!

Before I disappeared from the girl's vision, I heard her cry, "W-Wait! I don't know how to get back!"

"Just go towards the white spire!" I shouted at her. _Poor girl. Talented, though._

Still, it was interesting to know where all these humans came from. Plus, I got to see the native version of the Lightning Bolt spell. It was a bit weaker than I thought… _It's probably because she wasn't that good at what she was doing though._

Selenia was eating up all of Reya's biscuits when I arrived. She looked up at me and grumbled, "Do you know how long I've been waiting?" Her expression was dark though she was strangely quiet. Reya was hiding behind her pile of paperwork and avoiding eye contact.

"Eh… he he?" I tried to smile at her.

"Never mind that, but Lady Serra is waiting too. You did ask for a visit today, yes?" She asked before crossing her arms. "Do you know how much work Lady Serra has been doing lately?"

"Erm…" I blinked and guessed, "More than me?"

"That is obvious, _Little Lady_," She said rather mockingly. Selenia placed her hands on her hips and frowned down at me as she glided across the rooms towards me. "Did you ever take time to see what preparations Lady Serra had in planned herself?"

"Well, I…" I stopped. I stared up into Selenia's eyes in defiance, but I knew I hadn't spent as much time with Serra as I needed or wanted. My glaze fell and I muttered, "I was just… too busy."

Selenia harrumphed. "Too busy to coordinate your efforts? Lady Serra has said things about you to us, which you do not know."

"L-Like what?" I asked, half curious and half scared.

"She _complimented_ you," Selenia growled with a hint of distain. "I do not understand why, but Lady Serra still sees you as an equal. She says you will have as much to do with our defense as she will, but I doubt it."

"You doubt Serra's words? That's a first for you," I noted quietly.

Selenia leaned closer, her glare was apparent from this distance. I felt her warm, sweet breath on my face and I saw the heat in her eyes. But even without any Blue Mana, I thought she didn't hate me. I was mistaken about that. There was no hatred in her eyes, but I saw something akin to confusion. "I never questioned Lady Serra, until you arrived. You are an anomaly, but you have done good things and bad. Heh—everyone drinks your tea… You are mortal, like the others. So…" A tear rolled down her eyes. "Why does the Lady listen only to you? She doesn't even have time for us, her firstborn, anymore!"

Reya was at her side, suddenly. She appeared in the blink of an eye. The taller angel reached up and grabbed Selenia's forearm and looked on silently. There was a message she conveyed to Selenia silently, but I couldn't tell what it was.

I could only gape and stare. _What did people normally do when they were confronted with this sort of situation?_

"… I apologize. I was out-of-line," Selenia settled her feet onto to Reya's marble tiles.

"No," I started to say.

"Yes," Selenia interjected. Her head tilted downwards, and I couldn't see her expression. "We were not made for jealousy. Envy is such a poisonous, _mortal_ trait."

I backed away, only shaking my head. I tried to think of an excuse to leave, but none of those that came to my mind were plausible enough.

Selenia whimpered, "Each day I followed you, you shatter my belief. I do not understand anything anymore... Your daughters question me on what is the nature of governing, of power and of passion. I was not made for such things. I cannot… I am not good enough, powerful enough to make such decisions! It isn't my duty… Why did Lady Serra assign me to you?"

"I… erm, this isn't what she means, it's probably just…" I trailed off._ It was probably because it was convenient for all of us. It was probably because she didn't foresee your limits._ But I couldn't say that. I couldn't say that to Selenia's face. That would be an insult. "I…"

"How can we compete with you? Each day you create something new, something delightful, and each day we are reminded of our limitations. I… my limitations! How can I do anything but stay in your shadows, when you are around? I feel so helpless. So useless. What need does Lady Serra have of me?" Selenia asked hoarsely and hysterically.

"I… I need to go. To see Serra," I ran away.

"Please… help me," Selenia whimpered as I shot out the door. I almost stopped.

But I didn't.

My trip to Serra's Sanctum was a solemn one. It was quick, despite my every wish for it to be slow. I wanted to see a friendly face and to forget about Selenia's breakdown. _I couldn't have been the sole cause of that, could I? I could have been the pressure of the coming war, it could have been… a lot of things._ I wrapped myself in golden mists until I was just a glimmer of light. Then I arrived in Serra's towering temple in my simple garb of white linens under a simple, silver armor. It was what most mortals were wearing these days. The clothing was comfortable—the thighs were baggy while the ankles were tied tight, as were the forearms. I had not worn this before, but I had seen many mortals walk in similar outfits. A glow washed over my silver and white, the lingering light of my previous form.

As a particle of light, I moved _fast_. Yet I had time in that light speed solitude to think. I thought, I thought, and I thought, the same mantra over and over again. _It's my fault._

_It's my fault. It's all my fault. I brought this; it's my fault._

I must have said it to myself at least a million times. And then I made myself whole, and placed a smile on my face. "Serra, I'm here!" A whiff of strong tea assailed my senses and I felt a part of my smile become genuine.

"I have been waiting for you," Serra replied with a smile.

And I felt my smile become whole. "Ah, I was, um, delayed. It was my fault, though. I got curious about all the new people arriving in your Realm."

"Hm, yes. There are more who have faith in me than you thought, right?" Serra said with a small nod. The edges of her eyes seemed to wrinkle just a little. I felt like I was in the presence of my mother, seeing that expression, and I felt my heart soften.

"Yeah... but I think it's not really a surprise. I have faith in you too," I said, yet I felt bad for saying it. In some ways, it felt like I was lying to her. And to lie to Serra was similar to tearing my heart out…

"Mm," Serra murmured. She drank her tea slowly. "Have you come to see my creation? I had worked on this for the past year."

I blinked in surprise. "That long? What is it?" I wondered.

"I call it 'Serra's Ban'," Serra replied. Then she explained, "I will not allow the taint of corruption into my universe, Little Lady. The Black Mana that Phyrexia exudes will not come, not while my protection remains. And it will remain, as long as my Realm remains. Even past my death…"

"Don't say that! You won't die," I interjected quickly. I walked closer to her, until I was just two steps away. I held her hands in mine and tried to convey to her my need. I needed her to be an anchor in my life. I needed someone to comfort me when I made a mistake. And I needed someone smarter and wiser than me. _I need someone like my mother, someone like you._

"But my dear student," Serra sighed. "All things come to an end eventually. Even eternity will end."

"I… I won't let Phyrexia end you," I said stubbornly, rejecting that the very thought of it frightened me.

Serra sighed again and beckoned me to her side.

I took a seat next to her, folding my skirt up so that I could sit comfortably. She wrapped an arm around me and stroked my hair. I didn't complain about it. It was soothing.

Then I began to cry. I didn't even know why I was crying. Planeswalkers couldn't… shouldn't be able to cry. We were like Gods to Gods… I could create a whole universe on whim. But… "Why are these tears falling?" I sniffled out, almost too unintelligible to be understood.

Somehow, Serra knew what I was saying, and she only smiled sadly down at me. There was confusion in her eyes, but it was put aside. She just smiled and stroked and said, "It's alright to cry. Cry and become stronger. Stumble and then stand. Hide and become brave. Cry on my shoulder, so that you can grow after. Cry, cry away your fears and woes."


	20. a befuddled planeswalker with bling

My eyes turned up to the skies. There was something different about it that I noticed after Serra's revelation. It was something subtle like a transparent sheet of silk pulled over one's senses. I knew from Serra's lessons that it was an enchantment, but it seemed so part of the background that it did not occur to me that it was something new. Now that I noticed it however, I saw it clearly in the skies.

It was like something that belonged—an absolute law of this universe set by Serra. It was a decree that Black Mana cannot exist in the same sense as when God declared 'Let there be Light'. Visually, I was awed by the majesty of what I viewed. It was an all-encompassing Aurora Borealis that flickered in the skies—yet it only added hues of bright, white light. There was something foreign about it that I couldn't understand. I felt like I was reading a foreign language…

"… That's amazing," I muttered. I had cried on Serra's shoulder for the past hour, but it could just as easily been an eternity. "How does it… how does it work? What is it?"

Serra turned about, tinkering with a large lens at the center of the room. Her hands ran around its edges carefully and gently, as if it was made from something more fragile than tissue paper. She replied with a giddy tone, "Sometimes you forget, my dear student. I am not just your mentor, but I am something more. I created my world; changing its most fundamental laws was not _too_ difficult."

"B-But doesn't that mess with anything else? I mean, if… well, I still don't understand _how_! It's just…" It was too mind boggling. If we could change the laws of the universe on our whims, then what threat was Phyrexia, truly?

"You are well educated," Serra complimented. "With, as according to you, learning built up from hundreds, if not thousands, of years of mortal scholars. But you should not so easily underestimate me and mine, Little Lady."

"I didn't, I don't, I-I mean," I protested, striding beside her and grabbing her wrist as gently as I could.

"But you did. You do not do it consciously, but you did. There is a reason for it, and I saw that proven in the changes you have wrought," Serra sighed. She sounded tired and her shoulders slumped. She looked away from me, and a shadow was cast over her expression. "It is difficult to admit my own faults, but I see where I was mistaken. In this multiverse, I wanted a sanctuary away from conflict… but that is impossible. A status quo, an unchanging society… those are stagnant."

"W-Well, not exactly! There's charm in that too," I said while trying to move to face her.

Serra shook her head and held me tightly in an embrace. Her chest shook slightly, and she rested her chin on my head. "No," Serra whispered. "Charm does not protect my people. They do what I want because I find joy in it, but what is the point of repetition?"

"H-Hey now…" I tugged on her shoulders to pull her away. At the same time, I didn't want her to let go. This was a side of her I never saw before. "You know this would have not worked if not for you teachings. If they weren't faithful and if they were just mortals without belief, then things would be different… some would be tempted by self-interest too much to think of the whole. Usually, those are the leaders, from my experience."

"But what difference do they have from me, Little Lady?" Serra asked in a wavering whisper. She started to stroke my hair, making me melt in her hands. Then she said even softer still, "I am still uncomfortable with the changes. I know that the past way of things lead my people to a happy, if simple life. It is a life I love. But now, now, I cannot know what will happen next."

"Hey," I murmured, not quite believing that I was comforting her. She shouldn't need this! I was the one with the insecurities. Serra was supposed to be the one stable Planeswalker who we could all rely on. "Hey. Serra. I know it's going to be chaotic, but what's the worst that could happen? You're… you're not like the corrupt politicians I know. Heh. Chinese government officials are way worse, and besides, you care for your people. You won't run. I know you'll be fine."

"Your certainty is doubtful, Little Lady," Serra laughed nervously. "Even a blind man can tell you are not sure of your own words."

"I'm just…" What was I thinking? My mind was going off on too many different tangents. There were too many projects and too many people for me to focus on one thing. "I'm fine. Really."

Serra sighed and turned away from me. She spun her lens again, a thousand and more images of her Realm laid bare to her. From there, she saw everything that was her kingdom. Her eyes shone with the light of the sun. "The human experts, some of them have been speaking to me in their prayers. Perhaps you can tell me your opinion on this, it brings forth an issue that I am unsure of how to deal with. A few mortals want for equal treatment as my angels."

"What's wrong with that?" I asked. _This was… different?_

"There is nothing inherently wrong with equality amongst my followers, but they want for themselves the life of an angel. They want their wings and their powers, and mostly for their life to be as long as an angel's," Serra pursed her lips as she said this. "The more educated ask for their own fiefdoms, saying that my angels are not the best for their specific jobs. They want to have their own islands, their own factories, and their own servants."

"That's… a bit much, isn't it?" I asked with a frown. "Did they really ask for all that, all of them? Directly from you? That does not sound like the humans I have seen in your world thus far."

Serra smiled down at me as if she was looking at a child again. It had been sometimes since I was at the end of one of these. "You have met less than one hundred mortals, while there live more than one thousand times that number in my Realm. But they bare everything to me in their prayers. I see and hear all. They can ask vocally for only an island, but their heart of hearts ask for more. It is not just that, but they talk and question and plan. It seems like even the most faithful of mortals want more, always more."

"If they were just satisfied with what they have, then what's the point of making themselves better or working harder than they did before?" I asked. "I'm not sure about giving them all their on islands—that sounds like too much work at this point. But if they are talented and do their jobs better than angels, shouldn't they be allowed to vie for a better station in life than what they have? You might want to explain what becoming one of your angels might entail too, though."

"Fairness is quite a problem, isn't it? The multiverse is not a fair place. There are the strong who rule those who are weak," Serra muttered sorrowfully. "How would you deal with such a problem, Little Lady?"

"Eh," I shrugged. "I guess I would, uh… make my angels better? If they can prove without a hint of doubt that my angels outperform the unsatisfied humans, then those humans lose that right to complain, right? But I guess that's… underhanded? In the mortal point of view, I suppose. But I think that's just a symptom of a problem. We'll need to figure out why mortals feel they are being treated unfairly. But, ah… well, I've only learned a little economics, I'm not much on the theory of all that other stuff. It's quite beyond me!"

"It is new territory," Serra allowed. "But is new territory brought on by your ornithopters and clockwork engines. We have greater buildings made from purely labor than from magic today, with larger fields of crops than ever before… all from the toil of mortal hands. Why, in this past year, my mortals have almost doubled in number!"

"Surely you're joking!" I gasped. "Doubled?" 

"Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it is something I was rather unprepared for. The change was subtle at first, but as my people had more time to themselves, well," Serra waved a hand. I looked up and saw a rosy tint on her cheeks.

I smirked. "I can't believe… you didn't _watch_ them, did you?" I asked with a mischievous and giddy tone. _How scandalous!_

"Oh, no! Of course, not like that," Serra said with a roll of her eyes.

"Hmph, I bet this isn't the Serra they worship. Were there any angels who mingled amongst the mortals?" I added curiously.

Serra tried to choke down a chortle and failed. Instead, she covered her lips with one hand and smiled. "Come now, let us discuss the enchantment. I crafted it to be tied to my White Mana Line, which I think you can do too. With it anchored here, at my Sanctum, where the most White Mana is gathered in my Realm. But it is only an enchantment as far as its activation is concerned."

I wanted to call her out on the angels and humans mingling, but this was far more interesting. She successfully diverted my attention, this time! I'd best make a note to ask her about it later… "What do you mean, only the activation?"

"For a plane-wide change in the fundaments, it is like changing the way a part of my universe worked. Do you remember when you introduced the concept of gravity to me? Or friction, for example? It is similar to that," She said with a nod. "Were I to remove the concept of friction on this plane, I only need to activate the enchantment. Once it is done, an utterly irrevocable change is set, unless I crafted another enchantment to remove it. Countering the original spell after the activation or destroying the enchantment would… well, it would not change anything."

"That's a scary thought," I muttered.

"I do remember the rather strange questions you first asked when I taught you about the creation of a plane. Do you remember them?" Serra asked.

I nodded. "Of course. I asked you about things like, erm… what were they? Like gravity, friction and that sort of thing. I… may have forgotten about that already." I shuffled my feet a pace nervously.

"Yes," Serra responded with a nod. "You asked of practically everything I would have taken for granted in any plane—the air we breathed, the moisture, weight, light… things I have not thought about. It was… an eye-opening experience to even consider them, little student." She giggled. "And that unique perspective you gave me helped me create this change. Thank you."

"Wow," I muttered. I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. "I couldn't have helped that much. I don't even really remember the details of when I made my plane. I just… um… just…"

"You just created everything similar to what you expected a world to be like? You created a world similar to the place you were born?" She asked.

I nodded and then frowned. "… Yeah."

"That is how Planeswalkers do it. But as I learned more about these interesting subjects, I suspect, were I to take them into consideration… my creation of my Realm would have taken less time, or perhaps much less power," Serra stated calmly. She placed her lens down and smiled. "It was still difficult, you can imagine, weaving a spell that changed the way my plane worked. I assume that it is now impossible for Black Mana to enter."

She sounded confident about that. "But how do we know for sure? And what happens if it proves false?" I wondered.

"Then we build more defenses. We prepare. Even now, Radiant is weaving her own magic with her lieutenants' into being. We shall be prepared," Serra giggled. "Now then, how have your experiments with the, ah, Sol Ring come along?"

"It's actually pretty good," I replied. I lifted a hand that was covered in bling—I mean, three silvery-gold rings that were each a half-inch thick. One was on my forefinger, one was on my index finger, and one was on my pinky. The first had a glowing red line running through the center of the ring. The second was blue, and the third was white. They all pulsed with the power of suns as I focused my attention on them. "Urza figured out how to turn the two things into one. So I can cast these spells without even using any power. The first one makes lightning, the second negates a spell, and the third heals."

"Those three make powerful artifacts then," Serra muttered in wonder. She leaned close and studied my rings. "They are so small, yet so filled with power. I can feel the light and heat within them from here!"

"I wasn't really involved in making these, it was really just Urza. He's pretty smart, but we got it down to the point where we can make the, ah… Ring of Health in larger quantities," I reported. "We're making about a hundred of them every day now, but that's changing every day."

Serra smiled. "You should make a factory for these here too. Perhaps for Selenia's duchy?" She suggested.

"Ah, right…" I muttered. I unknowingly looked away from Serra's glaze. "I'll… ah… I will talk to her about it."

Serra clapped her hands and smiled brightly. "Yes, why don't you discuss this with her now? I am sure she would be more than delighted to aide you in your efforts. Go, go! I await your good news!"

"I…" A flash of light, and I was outside of Serra's Sanctum. Looking around, it seemed like there was a line composed of both angels and humans standing outside, waiting for their turn to have an audience with Serra. And knowing Serra, she was probably watching me with her lens. With a sigh, I walked out of the waiting hall. The marble was cool to my feet. I didn't want to go. _Well, it was a long way, right? Selenia is probably still waiting for me at Reya's office. I could take a long, scenic route and_—I looked up and saw Selenia standing at the entrance, her body casting a long shadow that reached my feet.

"Oh, bugger."


	21. a selfdoubting girl is doubted more

An angel stood before me.

You would probably think of a beautiful woman with curly, blond hair, right? Maybe she would even have beautiful, white-feathered wings? She would have clean, white robes too covering alabaster skin. That was what most people thought of, right? Or maybe they took the more biblical interpretation, where they were a mass of lights, huge eyes, and eldritch horrors that made shoggoths look tame. Both were cool, but they were wrong, in my situation.

Selenia stood not ten steps away from me, panting. The distance between Reya's land and Serra's Sanctum was not too far. But for an angel of Selenia's power, it was a great expanse of clear skies. I saw beads of sweat roll down Selenia's neck in tantalizing slowness. She did have alabaster skin, which was perfectly smooth and glowed in the sunlight. Her hair was frazzled and damp. Some strands of short curls clung to her skin, slick with her exhaustion. She drooped—most noticeably her wings, her eyelids, and her shoulders—and looked like she was about to fall. At the last moment, she leaned on her knees.

The angel that stood before me was not the image of an angel. Were it not for her wings, which were like thick blankets that were draped over her shoulders, not even the other mortals would have known she was an angel.

She wore little. Covered in only a few sparse pieces of silver. There were her gleaming bracers and anklets, and a chain shirt peaked out of her white tunic. One of the sleeves of her tunic slipped down half-way, giving me a scandalous look of her naked collar and shoulder. It was not a picture of perfection. Her state drew the eyes of many curious bystanders.

Even a few angels turned their eyes this way curiously. They murmured quietly. I could not tell what they were murmuring about and I had no idea what they were thinking.

"Selenia? I didn't expect to see you here," I spoke, not truly understanding what I was doing. It felt like I was standing back and someone else took over for me. My mouth moved on autopilot. My body shook each time her eyes raised a little higher and I felt numb. I didn't take a step closer to her, despite her being on the verge of collapse.

She looked up and wiped away the sweat that had collected on her forehead like a thin sheen of oil. Then she took a step closer to me. And then she took another.

I stumbled back, step by step. My hands shook by my sides. _Stop coming closer…_

"Lady… Lady Student? Don't go," Selenia gasped quietly. "Where are you going? Come back." Her voice wavered.

I looked to the left and right of my feet. Suddenly, the little grey ripples in the white marble tiles beneath my feet were so interesting. They were more interesting than looking up. "I-I'm not going anywhere."

"Good. It is my duty to follow you, and I will," Selenia replied stubbornly. She was close now.

_When did she get so close?_

Her eyes were wary and tired. I saw the bags under her eyes; there was a redness around them that told me something I didn't want to know. The thin, almost invisible rings just beneath her eyes told me something else. I didn't want to know either of them. _Stop. Stop, stop, stop!_

She smiled thinly. Her lips had lost their color somewhere along the way, like red oil paints mixed with white and grey. There was a crack there. When was the last time she rested? When was the last time she stopped and ate something, when she was following me? She sighed audibly when I stopped moving away. When I looked up at that, Selenia turned away.

_Why would you look away?_

"Come then, do we not have more work to accomplish?" She asked curiously, as if nothing had happened between us. She acted as if she didn't break down and I didn't do anything wrong.

_But it was all my fault. It always was. But at the same time_… I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment. I had to remind myself, I was as all-powerful as I knew. I had to be more confident than this. "You can't just expect me to pretend it didn't happen," I blurted out loudly suddenly.

Selenia's arm stopped, just half way between reaching out to grab me and resting on her hips. Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second before her expression turned to a glare. Her lower lip curled down and her chest rose as she took a deep breath.

"I mean, I mean, I can't just forget about that!" I nearly shouted, already desperate for her intense glaze to turn away.

"I understand," She replied with a curt nod.

"Y-You… you do?" I blinked.

"Yes. I was wrong. Angels are not mortals, we are inherently different. We have different purposes. Yours is a duty and purpose higher than my own," She said, sounding indifferent and monotone. "I must respect and understand that. I apologize—"

"No! No, no, no!" I cried shrilly. "That's… that's not it at all!"

Selenia blinked, taken back. Her lips parted wordlessly and she just _stared_.

"You, you… Ugh!" I clenched my fists and shook them. I wanted to pull my hair out and yell. I almost did. But then I noticed how silent it was, and looked around. Everyone was staring at me. I felt my cheeks heat up, so I grabbed her by the wrist. "L-Look, let's… we need to talk somewhere else," I muttered hurriedly. Then I dragged her away so quickly that we left in a sonic boom.

I paused. We were in the sky far away. Serra's Sanctum looked like a small island in the distance now, and we were obscured by clouds.

Panting softly, I released Selenia's wrist. It was red with an imprint of my fingers. "S-Sorry about that," I muttered quietly.

"You have nothing to apologize for," Selenia murmured in return. She tested her wrist tenderly with her forefinger, middle finger, and thumb. Upon touching where I was holding her, she hissed softly.

I grimaced at the sound. "Look, Selenia," I said. "I'm… I'm different."

"I know you are," Selenia replied.

"No, that's not what I mean at all!" I stomped. Beneath me, the clouds parted quickly and a small hurricane formed over the empty abyssal skies. I breathed loudly again and tried to clear my thoughts while Selenia waited silently. "What I mean is… I'm not mortal either."

"That would be obvious," Selenia said again. This time, there was more emotion in her tone, but it wasn't the kind I liked. "If not for the ways Lady Serra referred to you and treated you, then perhaps because of the moon in the sky." She gestured upwards towards the marble of swirling red and blues.

"Oh. Right." I nodded dumbly.

"I had thought you an extremely talented mortal, once," Selenia muttered with a bitter smile.

"That's… well, that's not that far off…" I muttered. _In the distant future, perhaps._

"Do you want to tell me what you are? _Do I even want to know?_" Selenia asked slowly. She reached for me and grabbed me by the shoulders, as if she was clinging to a life line. Her features were twisted and her eyes were pleading. She wanted to know, but she was… confused?

"I…" I turned away. There were too many reasons not to tell her, and for what? All those risks, problems—more and even more questions I didn't want to answer or hear—would be all for what? Did a single person's peace of heart—important or not, angel or not—matter that much? I knew the answer, but I didn't want to think it. _She's not a statistic. She's a person._

"No, actually… no," Selenia said, suddenly backing away. She shook her head sadly. Her silvery hair was pretty in the wind, swaying like this, even if they stuck together with oil and sweat. She was pretty, in the sort of way that a girl would be pretty in the rain. "I do not need it, and I will not force you. It isn't my place to."

"I-I, you, argh!" I shook her off and yelled. "It's never been about what you were made for! It's not about what your place is! I had this damned conversation with Radiant too! You want something? Come take it!"

Selenia froze. For a moment, the only sound audible was the beating of her tired wings.

"… Selenia. Do you really want to be like me?" I asked, running a hand through my hair. _Why didn't I make my hair softer and thinner, more like Serra's hair? I like soft hair._ I closed my eyes and said, "It's not all fun and games, you know? Actually… you're probably going to take that seriously. Ugh." I groaned. "Can you understand that what I do… what I try to make to improve everyone's lives… it hurts Serra to see?"

"W-What?" Selenia gapped. "I… I want what you have, but not at the cost of hurting Lady Serra! How… what did you do?"

I swept my hands over the skies and gestured to all that we saw. "Do you see this kingdom? Do you see all the vehicles in the skies? All the people toiling in new ways and enjoying their lives? Do you see all this _change?_"

"… Yes?"

"_That_ is what I bring. That is what I am doing. You know that. But do you see what subtle things they herald?" I asked quietly. I sighed and stared into the distant clouds, imagining my home in a forlorn silence. The realization that I missed Earth this whole time never came to me easily, but it was always at the edge of my mind. I turned back to my angelic companion and saw her fears and confusion. I saw the questions in her eyes, so I pressed on. "I am changing her people. I am changing her culture. People are using money now more than ever; there are more people now than ever. Mortals, as you know, do not completely control how they procreate. This is change. This is the unknown, but it is moving away from the order that Serra set."

"And it is hurting her," Selenia ended. The horror was dawning on her. I didn't know when the questions ended and her own assumptions began, but she looked like she wanted to throw up. "This is wrong. We need to stop… survival at the cost of what we are… it isn't…"

"Isn't it worth it, though?" I asked abruptly.

She frowned and answered, "Perhaps it is, then. Maybe, if we can return to it. There is freedom in that. There are no powers that stops us. Lady Serra preserves that freedom for us, even if we might not want it. But… there is more to this, isn't there? How, little student, is it that you know so much? Think so differently?"

I smiled. I was just happy she was no longer hysterical. "It's just the way I was raised. My parents, my teachers, they all teach me things. I learn as I experience life. It is no different from any other mortal."

"But we… but I do not have such opportunity," Selenia muttered. "In the end, I am to be tossed aside. There is no need for us, if we cannot improve as you do… We…"

"But you can," I said, cutting in.

"No," Selenia shook her head. "There is a difference between mortals and angels. Mortals cannot understand it and that is why they want to be us…"

I scoffed. "Don't be so high and mighty. It's the same reason you want to be like me. It's envy and it's jealousy. It's because they want things, they want to be closer to Serra. Like you do."

Selenia stopped and frowned. "No…" She trailed off slowly as she shook her head vigorously. Did she believe that shaking hard enough might deny such a fact completely?

"Um, yeah?" I grabbed her by the collar and leaned close, until I was just an inch away from her. I could taste her strawberry-flavored breath from this close. There was more rosiness in her cheeks than I first realized. I growled at her, tired of her self-doubt and tired of my own, similar lack of confidence, "That's all it is. You aren't so different. You can _change_, so change."

"… But… how?" She whispered in a higher pitch. A lonely tear lingered at the corner of her eyes. "How?" She asked again desperately.

I leaned closer, touching my forehead against her brow. I felt the heat of her skin and the slick stickiness of her sweat. It felt so utterly _human_. "If you can't, if you don't know how, then lean on me. Let me help you. Ask for my help… I won't deny that from you. You're capable of becoming more. Serra made you in her image and in the image of mortals. I… I won't run away. I won't, not anymore. I-I promise. Trust me."

"I don't want to. You are arrogant and reckless, and you cause others heartache. You bring this… this _change._ You changed Lady Serra so that she would not shed her light on us as much as before. You changed our world… and I do not think it will ever return to the way it was before. I don't want to trust you, Little Lady… but what do I have to lose anymore?" Selenia whispered in return.


	22. a curious walker changes her shape

Selenia stood on the pier beside my sky ship. She had her hands folded under her chest. With an irritated, impatient tone, she asked, "Well? Is it time to return? I await your guidance."

"Hold up," I said as I raised a hand. "I was thinking about something. You said Serra stopped looking at you and the other angels, right? How true is this?"

"I would not lie," Selenia replied with a frown.

"I mean, you did not exaggerate, right?" I asked while returning the frown.

Selenia sighed exasperatedly, "Of course not. Though, perhaps I have not been completely objective in my observations. However, Lady Serra has not been applying herself to her lesser duties. She does not even take time to enjoy the choirs anymore. I do request you address her properly, Little Lady."

"Uh huh, sure, whatever," I replied absentmindedly.

Selenia leaned closer and studied me. "What is the problem?" She asked slowly.

"Eh, eh… it's not a real problem, it's more of a concern, I guess," I said with a shrug. "I just find it weird that Serra would stop being a matron of the arts anymore. She should be fine after she put up the enchantment…"

"Lady Serra has many plans and many works in motion. Perhaps this enchantment was merely one in the many?" Selenia suggested.

"No, that can't be it. I think I'll go ask her about it actually," I said. The issue was already resolved in my mind. That was what I was going to do.

But Selenia thought differently, apparently. She tilted her head and watched me like a curious bird watching a potential prey. "Have you not already asked her? Or if Lady Serra did not tell you, then perhaps there is a reason for it. Lady Serra would not make common, mortal mistakes."

"Something tells me I should doubt that," I snorted in an unladylike manner.

"Well, whatever this _something_ is, it sounds rather blasphemous and rude. You should get rid of it," Selenia harrumphed.

I chortled softly, "Even if this something is my intuition?"

"Intuition is the blessed instincts and visions given by Lady Serra, you must be mistaken then. If there is no other problems, let us depart so that you may show me new wonders," Selenia concluded, feeling rather triumphant.

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "You're so silly sometimes, Selenia."

"I am not! I am dutiful and honorable, and when I work, I am professional. I am not silly. After all, I am not _you_," Selenia replied.

"Whatever, I want to ask Serra anyway," I retorted.

"_Lady_ Serra. And no, if Lady Serra is too busy to give us her attention, then she must be working hard. I would ask you not to bother her with this trifle. It sounds rather like a mortal's self-doubt than something serious," Selenia said. She abruptly turned me around by my shoulders and attempted to march me up the ramp of the sky ship.

"Hey!" I yelled, throwing her hands off of my shoulders. "It might not be something serious, but I want to know about it! It could be serious for all you know. Serra probably just doesn't want to trouble us with whatever it is."

Selenia paused and frowned. For a moment I thought she was going to agree with me, but then she shook her head. "That is silly, Little Student. You are making a mockery of yourself."

"I am not being silly! Besides, I thought I told you I'm not a mortal," I said with a pout. A part of me enjoyed noting that Selenia would never have used the word 'silly' before she met me.

"But you act exactly like one. You have your duties, and they are not pestering Lady Serra," Selenia turned me around again.

"H-Hey!" I shrugged her off. "I can walk on my own, you know? But… but fine. I won't go asking her, but you have to agree to help me with something, alright?"

Smiling victoriously, Selenia nodded. "That would be acceptable, Little Student," She said.

I grumbled while I faced away from her, but then plastered a smile on my face when I turned to her. "Alright. I won't bother Serra. But I want to ask around and see what the other angels and mortals all say. You will… oh, I don't know, stay here while I go look around."

"B-But that… you…" Selenia scowled and said, "You are a devious girl. But I will not abandon my duty, I will follow you until I am commanded otherwise."

"Well, how the heck am I supposed to explain why you're following me around?" I asked and threw my hands up in the air.

Selenia stroked her chin and thought for a moment. "I would be willing to guide you about," She accepted.

I thought about it for a second, which was more than enough time for me to come to a decision. Being an energy being did make my thoughts much, much faster, after all. "I'll take it! But if I want to go somewhere, you have to take me there, alright?"

"That… that would be acceptable," Selenia murmured.

"Yeah, this is going to be wonderful," I muttered.

"I do not feel confident at the sound of that," Selenia interjected.

I ignored her and continued, "See, it'll be like a… a sort of detective noir! An angel and a god, doing detective things. Together, they fight crime!"

Selenia sounded unimpressed however, "Crime is not an issue in this Realm."

I pouted. "Fine, then we'll just go. I've got a plan. I've been thinking—"

"Please do not injure yourself doing so. I would find it difficult explaining such an injury to Lady Serra," Selenia said again.

I threw my hands up. "Stop it! Stop that! Why are you doing that?"

"Because you are an idiot," Selenia replied with a sigh. She ran her hands through her hair, making the wavy strands fall back like an elegant, golden waterfall. "I have realized this."

"I-I… you…! Bah!" I spun on my heel and turned away. "J-Just do what I tell you, alright?"

Selenia stared at me warily for a moment before nodding slowly. "I will trust you on this, this time."

"Good," I said tiredly. "Now, this is what we're going to do… but first, I think I need to look differently. Do angels recognize me if they see me, Selenia?"

"There is not a single angel who would not," Selenia replied honestly.

"Alright, then how about this…?" The thing about my first few times at making my body was that I was trying to transform. That was hard for me then, because with only the White Mana at my close disposal, I was able to recreate my body from nothingness easily. Transformation was out of my league back then. Thankfully, I have gotten much better and much more experience. Besides, with the Blue Mana at my disposal, any sort of transmutation, transformation, or anything related to that were just pitifully simple. With a pulse of power, a wave of light washed over my body from my head and down.

I opened my eyes, feeling slightly taller and a bit… rounder. It was a strange, out-of-body experience. Looking down, I saw thick, soft locks of blonde hair. I ran a hand down my arms and then my belly and hips. My skin felt tighter and smoother, and it was definitely paler. I felt curvier too. With a smile, I turned to Selenia and asked, "Well?"

"You look like Lady Serra," Selenia said dumbly. She gapped and her eyes didn't leave my face. "But… mortal. No angel would mistake you for her… but the resemblance…"

"Ah, well, I was aiming for sort of looking like her, but different enough. Sort of like if Serra if she was starting high school," I muttered with a pout. "Well, it's good enough! Come on, Selenia!"

She nodded as if she was not quite there. It was shock on her face, I realized. She was shocked for some reason, but whatever it was would probably be silly.

I grabbed her by one hand. "I wanted to do this for a while, you know? It's just not the same if I used Serra's lens. Come on." _This is going to be like that one time in a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, where they went dressed up as peasants. Well, probably without the enslaving and all the stupid fake-wizard guy and terrible knights running around. _I was already imagining a grand little adventure.

"Y-Yes, Lady Se—Little Lady!" Selenia muttered too softly to be heard. She nodded and hurried along after me.

It didn't occur to me at the time that this was an extremely bad idea.


	23. a spying girl takes an angel's wings

Three angels floated above us. They were bloody gorgeous in the sense that they looked like saintly women, like all angels in this plane were. That meant the white, flowing robes, the beautiful hair, and the perfect skin. If I didn't look like them so much at this moment, I would have been jealous, but all I could think of was how generic they looked. Seriously! They all looked like a cut-out from one of those Serra Angel cards. There was something I noticed different about them though: they had large, silvery pauldrons. That was not all; they were decked out in silver armor.

For a moment, I thought we were in trouble, but then one of them spoke. "Well, well… if it isn't Lady Selenia," The leader of the angelic pack said soothingly as any angel's voice was. But there was an undertone of mocking there too. She had a sort of attitude that I often associated with a cheer captain.

"Lady Clarity." Selenia nodded towards the other angel cordially and stiffly.

"Hm?" Clarity looked around exaggeratedly. "Where is that mortal that you have been tasked with following around? The one with the unappealing hair."

I opened my mouth before I knew what I was doing. I was about to say something about that! _My hair's just fine, thank you!_ But Selenia walked three steps from my side to my front and blocked the other angels from my view. "I am… on an errand," she said quickly.

_That sounded kind of lame. _I pouted behind her.

"Oh? And what sort of errand is this? I hope it is not another one of the mortal's attempts at… what was it she called it? Progress?" Clarity laughed, and her two groupies followed suit. It was the same laughter that Serra had, but somehow, it sounded dirty to me.

Selenia's muscles tightened. I noticed the small twitches from behind her. She clenched a fist behind her back and held me from moving in front of her. Well, I wasn't that impulsive—if I moved now, my cover would be blown, wouldn't it? Selenia seemed to think so. "My duties are not yours. Do not infringe upon that which you do not understand, Lady Clarify."

"Oh, oh my. I would not think of such, Lady Selenia. But I heard there was a man—a mere mortal—who wanted to interpret our Lady Serra's words differently on one of the larger settlements." Clarity drawled with a delicate hand covering her perfectly shaped lips, "Such a shock… such a shame. But such a thing would only happen because of that little scamp."

"The Little Lady has been much help to Lady Serra. You would do well to remember that," retorted Selenia.

"Help? Is that so? And what are you doing, here in the center of Lady Radiant's stronghold, if she was helping?" The bitchy angel asked before tutting. Her wings flapped in irritation.

Selenia seemed to pause, as if she was caught off guard. "I… I am on an errand for the Little Lady. That is all."

The angels seemed to think differently. "An 'errand'? You, who was once one of Lady Radiant's best lieutenants, are now degraded to running errands?" Clarity scoffed.

"Even the smallest tasks are essential," Selenia remarked. "The smallest pieces can create a magnificent machine." _Are you talking about the ornithopters? Well, yeah. They're sort of sentient too, now that I think about it. A bunch of gears! Sentient! Ha!_

I felt a smirk grow on my face, mostly because of Selenia's remark.

The angel Clarity didn't think it was amusing though. She flew in until she was like only an inch away from Selenia. The displaced air from her movement would have knocked me off my feet if I had still been a human. She hissed, "Do not speak of such abominations. I do not understand why you advocate such things—even that little scamp had said they would be tainted by the coming enemy as easily as mortals."

_Eh, that isn't exactly what I…_

"I wonder… does Lady Serra know about all the things that you have been a part of? You should know that Lady Radiant no longer thinks of you as one of hers," Clarity taunted.

Selenia's hands shook for a second at her sides. "I am on an errand, Lady Clarity," she repeated.

"Fine!" Clarify twirled about quickly. Then she turned around so abruptly that Selenia could not have reacted fast enough. "But what's this mortal chasing your tail, Lady Selenia? You should introduce us to her—"

I saw the Serra Angel's face peak out from above Selenia's wings. Trying to keep my cover, which was just a normal girl on this plane, I played it cool. "Hi!" I said with a wave and a smile.

"—uh…" Clarity stopped moving for some reason. Her expressions shifted weirdly. First she looked aghast, then she frowned. She turned to Selenia, then back to me, and then back to Selenia again. Her frown deepened, but then she turned to me again. Finally, she settled for a flabbergasted look that I couldn't properly describe with words.

_What a weird alpha-bitch_. I blinked and tugged on Selenia's wing feathers, signaling for her that we should probably leave.

Selenia took a step, but stopped. The other angels did not move.

I peeked out from behind Selenia and frowned. "Can we go now?" It was probably a bad thing to do, since I was trying to go incognito, but this stop was annoying!

The three angels just stared at me and Selenia. If we weren't stuck in this situation, I would have thought the way their eyes shifted between us to be funny. But it was just rude!

Finally Clarity seemed to recover first from whatever weird daze she had. "Fine, go on your errand. See if I care." She harrumphed and said to her friends, "Come on, Lady Radiant awaits."

As they left, Selenia and I ran away from that place quickly until we found an empty clearing in the clouds. It was not as bright as earlier in the day, but the clouds were swirling in a sort of continent sized nimbus, yet there was no darkness. The aura of Serra's Ban still shimmered brightly in the sky, with thin rays penetrating through like a thousand golden spears shooting across the purple canvas.

"Selenia," I said at last.

"Yes?"

"I think we need to have a better disguise."

"Yes, I agree."

"You do?"

"You need a better disguise, Little Lady. It was—"

I cut her off. "No, no! You're the one who needs a better disguise. They noticed you right away because they knew what you looked like. You've got those big fat wings."

Selenia frowned. "Did you just call my wings fat?"

"T-That's not it at all!" I hooked my hands on her hips sassily. "Look, you saw those humans milling around Radiant's place?"

"… No?" 

"Exactly!" I smiled triumphantly. "It's because you angels don't think humans are that important. I guess there's a point there since you guys can bend light, fly, life forever, and such… but it's gotten to a point where we could exploit it!" 

"Do continue, Little Lady," Selenia drawled with her arms crossed. "Would this new idea be any better than your current idea?"

"It's a part of my current idea."

"Ah, so it's equally inane then? Why are we wasting time here again?" Selenia raised an elegant eyebrow in question.

_Damn. That eyebrow moving is seriously awesome. _I didn't say that though. Instead, I tried to explain my reasoning and plan. "Look, no one notices a couple of humans just doing choirs, but they will notice if _Lady Selenia_ is running errands."

"And?"

"And… poof!"

"Poof?"

"Look at your wings!" I smiled toothily.

Selenia turned around and gasped loudly. "They're gone!" She started flailing around midair, though she didn't fall. After a few seconds, she stopped flailing and frowned. "They are still there… but I cannot see them."

"Yeah, it's pretty neat, right?" I grinned. "They can't tell you're an angel if you look like a human!"

Selenia barked a laugh. "But Little Lady," She protested. "I still _look_ like an angel even without my wings."

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at her. _Oh wow. Serra's face is so much easier to do that eyebrow thing with! I think I'm going to have to remember this._ "Oh yeah? Look in a mirror." I moved some of the water vapors in the clouds over, until they formed a sort of watery mirror in front of Selenia.

Her hands inched up and touched her face. It was a face with a few simple, almost unnoticeable flaws. Her hair was no longer perfect. Her eyelashes were not perfectly gloomed. There were even a line of wrinkles or two at the corners of her eyes. "I… I look mortal," She muttered.

"Well, just for this sort time period. It'll fade, or I can cancel it," I shrugged. "Don't worry! Come on, let's go! This'll be like James Bond, but more awesome. And I probably won't get the girl at the end. Alright, now it's a bit depressing, but let's go!"

I dragged Selenia around until we landed at one of the hubs of traffic for Serra's angels. It was another one of Radiant's fortresses. The whole thing was the shape of a giant star, and its battlements were made from solid light. I made a note to learn how to do that later. The individual blocks that made up the walls were huge—they could have fit a comfortable one-room apartment, actually.

We walked along, whistling cheerfully and trying our best to act like human girls on an enthusiastic walk.

Above us, I heard some humans talking, so I motioned for Selenia to slow down. It would be good to hear what sorts of stuff the humans actually talked about. It was for our cover, of course. It wasn't like I was interested or something… hmph!

"—You're going to run away, Gramp," One of the manly men above us said to the other in a gruff, manly tone. They definitely sounded like men. They sounded like really, really _drunk_ men. That reminded me to make a note to find out if they had mead here. I always wanted to try that stuff, but never did.

They were really hard to understand, like Yiddish-hard to understand! And that was if the mortal version of me was trying to understand Yiddish too...

"Ah, sod off. I'll stand just fine, see? I'll, ah, take the wall o' those Dawnbringers, Seg."

"Pft," 'Seg' scoffed. "Shows how weak you are. Only the weakest gents go wall guarding. It's a sissy's duty."

"Yeh forget we're up here! Ha!"

"Eh, it's true, but we're only doing it because we ain't knights, you bawdy, boil-brained barnacle."

"Heh. Heh. Hey, Seg. You know what I'm gonna do? If'n the Dawnbringers come causing problems, I'll push 'em off here. Only the weakest come? Eh, then their maidens will be coming. And then I'll thrust 'em against the walls."

"You're such a saucy, swag-bellied skainsmate," 'Seg' grumbled. "We've no problem with them lasses. It's the guildies and them traders that's the problem, yes sir."

"Eh, it's the same time, Seg." 'Gramp' cackled. "I'll be harsh on them. Wanting to push their greedy ways here? I'll cut off their heads! Then their maids… I'll do 'em too. Get it? Maiden's heads! Ha!"

"Aye, you fobbing, flap-mouthed flap-dragon. Don't let the angels catch you rambling like a buffoon though. Can only excuse so much to alcohol…"

"And I'll, ah, 'stand' too, get it? And—"

I turned to Selenia and asked, "What are they talking about? It's like trying to figure out Shakespeare! I hate Shakespeare. I'm getting a headache from listening to them. H-Hey! Wha—!"

Selenia just clamped her hands down on my ears tightly.

"H-Hey!" I struggled against her to no avail.

Then Selenia led me away before I could get another word in.

In retrospect, letting her lead me away—and not questioning it at all—was probably one of the better decisions I've made in my life.


	24. a selfdoubt girl sees more consequences

"What's this? I see you, Little Student. No guise can hide your scent from me," a luminous angel drifted down to us from the bright skies.

She did not wear the unflattering robe she had when we first met nor did she don the simple, silver armor that everyone else seemed to have. Instead of such mass produced regalia, this angel was decked in something hand crafted from delicate weeks of work and enough Mana in it that it could create a star on its own. It radiated with a sublime light, almost as if she were naturally standing in front of the sun. There were still rippling, baby blue clothes that wrapped around her forearms and her torso, and it was not an armor that covered her skin entirely. Thin golden leaves interlinked and crossed over as if they were mimicking rectangular feathers, making an imagery of multiple sets of golden wings wrapping around her body. The largest pair of golden wings wrapped around her thighs like a battle skirt, in the shape of an eagle's wings. In short, what she was wearing was exquisite.

My first reaction was to pout, but instead I looked sideways towards Selenia. My companion had taken a step back until she was partially hidden by me, never mind that it was probably a silly scene since she was a head taller than me. I bit my lower lip in hesitation, but then I acknowledged her. "Hello, it's been a while, hasn't it? You're looking rather… _radiant_."

"I see your 'wit' has not left you," Radiant replied dryly with her arms crossed over her bountiful chest. "Might I inquire as to what you're doing here in my citadel, sneaking around? If you wished to see the splendors of my labors, you need not a disguise. Though I would like it if Lady Serra visited beside you. That would be most welcome."

"Well, I… wait, really? You're not mad or something?" I asked.

Radiant looked away, with her face rather red in what was probably embarrassment. "Of course I am upset by this, but the last time I had seen you was a rather long time ago. Contending with Lady Dawnbringer has left me with the realization that contending with you was… fun." Radiant cleared her throat loudly. "Ahem. But this does not mean I will not outperform whatever tricks you thought up when the enemy arrives."

"You are mad, aren't you?" I asked with a frown. "You're getting better at hiding it! And what's with this armor? It's so… pretty. It's definitely not something one of the lines made."

"It's not!" Radiant smirked triumphantly. She twirled about for a moment, showing me just how glittering and pretty her clothing was. All the clasps and buckets looked like they were made from pearls. _Where the hell did she get pearls?_

"Alright, I get it. But it's not like you can have everyone in one of those. How long did it take to even make one? I bet it took too long," I muttered.

"Actually, this is the first of many. My sun-forges have taken long to make, but many of my fellow angels have learned to harness the power of the light into metals to forge creations that repel corruption. If you had visited with Lady Serra, you would know," Radiant laughed teasingly. She poked me on my chest with that same insufferable grin.

_As if she won something! Hmph. _"Wait, this reminds me of my Sol Rings…" I frowned.

"Lord Urza was willing to aide me, of course. It may not provide power or spells, but why bother when one could be protected by the light of the sun?" Radiant laughed heartily.

I was taken aback by this. With a frown, I asked, "You didn't create this yourself?" 

The light washing off of Radiant brightened and she drew closer to me. The smell of strawberries, blueberries and delicious, sweetened cream rolled off of her skin like a tantalizing yet annoying aura. I could almost imagine the gaseous, cartoony hands forming from her smell that would lift me up and draw me closer. Radiant leaned closer. "What was it that you said once, when you convinced the master artificer to aide you? 'There is no need to reinvent the wheel'?"

"B-But…" _Using a banned card was my idea!_ "I thought of it first," I pouted childishly. If I were honest with her, I would have told her how happy I was for her. It was great that she figured this out, and it would save many angels. _So why can't I be honest with this… this…_

"Come now, you can't believe the defense of the realm more important than our unofficial competition?" Radiant stepped back, looking surprised. "I worked tirelessly, creating great forges for this project. There were even some mages allowed into this Realm when they normally would not. I personally checked them for taint, though my skill in judging a mortal's character falls behind Lady Serra's, of course."

"Wait a minute," I muttered. "Serra didn't…? But even Urza got a bit of a trial period! Wasn't she working with you?"

Radiant's half-surprised and half-joyful expression fell to one of sudden seriousness. She mirrored my feelings in her expression. "No. I had thought Lady Serra was watching over your works."

"Well," I replied lamely. "She is teaching me… sometimes? It has been a few days in between each lesson now, and they're all pretty short. I… I need to see her."

Selenia spoke up for the first time in our conversation, "Little Lady, y-you shouldn't! It is not our place to question Lady Serra—"

"Oh, it is now," I snapped at her. "You said you wanted to be like me? Well, time to prove your convictions. We're going!"

Without waiting for her reply, I grabbed her by the wrist. Blue Mana poured out of me like a stream of water—small in comparison to the ocean within me, but still strong enough to wash away the laws of the universe temporarily. "See ya, Radiant!" I yelled, before a blue glow wrapped around us and flashed white until we saw nothing.

I didn't tell Selenia was the spell was. She would just freak out. Teleportation did that sometimes. This was mainly because my way of teleportation was messy, but it was faster than the way Urza taught me. Oh, sure, his way worked, but it took time to cast!

When I just needed to get from Point A to Point B, there was no time for hand waving and silly things like 'concentration' and 'focus'. No, what I did was simpler: I took one step Outside, and then another inside. It was a simple solution because in truth, we never left the Plane. We just… used a shortcut—since we didn't actually leave the Plane, to those inside it, we really did 'teleport'. Such a spell was safe enough for others, with enough application of Blue Mana anyway.

The spell occurred instantly, and then we were standing inside the grand chamber. It was darker now, almost as if it was dusk, but we all knew this universe had no night. The shadows of the great pillars—which were like the legs of giants—stretched from one end of the room to the other. The marble floors shone with a reddish orange hue. White lines of Mana still ran dimly through the walls in archaic designs, powering the hidden artifacts and enchantments within Serra's Sanctum.

Serra had slumped atop her throne, like a sleepy ruler who had no court. The room was empty, but her smile filled it up. She perked up slightly when she saw us, but I noticed her blinking away the sleepiness.

"Back so soon, Little Lady?" She asked.

"There's something I've got to ask you," I stated. Selenia tugged on the hem of my skirt nervously, yet she stayed silent behind me.

"Oh? Of course, what is it that you need?" Serra's eyes shone in the darkness, like twin suns. She wasn't looking at me, but at the faux-girl behind me.

I strode closer to the foot of her throne. "What have you been up to lately, Serra? I haven't seen you around."

"What do you mean?" Serra blinked. "I have just talked to you not so long ago, did you forget, my student?"

At this distance, I noticed things about her I didn't notice before._ I was stupid to have been thinking only about myself,_ I berated myself. She looks so worn, as if she hadn't slept in months. It was worse than even Selenia's look when she had been so distraught. But unlike Selenia, Serra was composed and leaned towards me with her back straight. It only ached my heart even more. I knew that we limited ourselves by our own perceptions of what we were. Serra still thought of herself as a human, even though she was so much more. Whether she allowed these features through consciously or unwilling didn't matter. It just mattered that she had them.

"When was the last time you slept?" I asked suddenly.

Serra tilted her head slightly, as if I had asked a silly question. "Was it not one of your first observations that our kind did not need to sleep, Little Lady?"

I crossed my arms and tried to scowl at her. This was more difficult than I thought. "B-But you know what I mean: you look tired. W-When was the last time you had rest?"

"Oh, if you must know," Serra sighed and her posture drooped slightly. "The spell which was the result of my enchantment… it is slightly heavier a burden than I expected. You don't need to think on it, Little Lady. You have your work cut out for you, as it is."

"No," I shook my head. "No. I _care_ about you! Hell, if it wasn't for you, I would have left this plane after the second month I was here! No, no, no! I want to help you," I pleaded.

Serra's weak smile shook and she looked sideways at Selenia. After a moment, she nodded carefully. "I will tell you a few details then, Little Lady. It seems maintaining a spell that imposes my will on infinity has been more difficult than I had expected. The problem is… the White Mana Line cannot stably anchor such an effect."

"That's not right… you said it was a change of the plane, a fundamental law," I muttered.

"That is true, but it seems like your understanding of the natural philosophies and mine differ, as do our understandings of Mana and the universe." Serra allowed. "Perhaps if you had created a spell, it would have been different, but I could not allow such a law run rampant. I wanted… no, I needed to control it. I know what I had said about Black Mana. It hurts to even think of, but I cannot stand the chance of accidentally hurting someone innocent because of this all-encompassing Ban."

"… What."

"I know, I know," Serra chuckled. "I was foolish, and a bit arrogant. Perhaps a bit of the silliness that has caught up with everyone has rubbed off on me too? In my travels, long ago, I had heard of a Planeswalker who used Black Mana, yet he protected the weak on his plane. It is not simply my speculation, Little Lady."

"Oh," I muttered. _I think I know who you're talking about_. "But… how can I help?" 

Serra shook her head. Her blonde locks swayed lifelessly from side to side. "I do not know, Little Lady. Repairing my Realm will take time, and I will not keep Urza Planeswalker here forever. He has been anxious lately, with his wounds almost completely healed."

I turned to her. "What? But it's not even three years since he arrived!"

"Perhaps things are different than your stories then. Perhaps there is a hope for us," Serra replied. She sounded like she was close to crying in pain. Her wariness was exemplified by the shadows cast by the diming dusk.

"… Maybe. But… I'll think about this. I'll ask my daughters. We'll come up with an answer, I won't, I can't just turn away from this. I promise you, I'll fix this!" I declared. A little part of me whispered to myself, _but it was your fault. Urza leaving sooner is probably your fault too. But you know you damaged the White Line. It is certainly your fault…_

"Thank you, Little Lady," Serra replied. "I think… I will take you up on that, and take a moment to rest. It is a most busy day tomorrow." She leaned back against her throne and closed her eyes.

I turned and saw Selenia bowing.

Grabbing her again by the wrist, I dispelled the illusion over her. I nodded to her and motioned to the sky. As we took off into the cool winds, I couldn't but help think to myself that I didn't want to disappoint Serra. I didn't want to disappoint her hope. _But at the same time, if things are different, then what good is my knowledge?_

_What if I changed things for the worse?_


	25. a surprised girl finds her home a wreck

When did this start?

I wasn't quite sure, but it was definitely sometime after we boarded my vessel. I was staring at Selenia, who was staring back. We were in a staring contest. I wasn't sure if it was a staring contest considering I was a being of pure thought and energy and Selenia was an angel created from distilled goodness and sunshine. Did either of us even blink unless we wanted to?

_Well, I'm winning any_—

"Multiple anomalies detected."

I blinked. _Fuck_. It was the ship; I had made its core out of a giant chunk of crystal a while ago. That core was also a computer, which I modeled after one of those ship computers of the Federation, in _Star Trek_. Turning to the source of the ship's voice, I asked, "Ship, how many anomalies are we talking about here?"

"Scanning…" The white opal walls around me hummed with Mana. It should have been able to answer instantaneously. I had a bad feeling about this. "Scanning complete. Approximately seven billion anomalies."

I twitched. _Those kids…_ "On screen."

The opal illuminated with color, showing what was happening outside of my vessel. We had just arrived into the atmosphere, which meant that we were already in my plane and out of Serra's consciousness. For a moment, there was only a blinding light. When it faded, I saw an enormous pillar of some kind of magical super plasma flaring out in a brilliant glow of red and blue. It was one of my three thousand and six hundred Mana Line knots that I had not gotten around to developing, I realized. But instead of a barren wasteland, there was only a giant hole spewing enough energy to crack open a planet.

I squinted. "What the hell?"

"What's going on?" Selenia asked beside me. "This does not look like the moon as we left it, a week ago. What happened to it, Little Lady?"

"I don't know… but I think I want to find out," I muttered. "Ship, fly up a bit and show me major concentrations of anomalies, please."

The vessel hummed as it went into outer orbit. What I saw as I was given a whole picture did not fill me with hope. There were hundreds of thousands of craters that littered the surface of my moon and the largest craters were bigger than Manhattan. Half of the moon had some two dozen rivers of lava running through it, each wider than the mouth of the Amazon and the rest of it seemed to have reverted to the previous, untamed state it was in. I frowned. _Scratch that, when did the atmosphere turn into magical plasma?_

"Ship, what are… what the hell?" I squinted. Even at this high definition, the pictures from this high up were blurred. I pointed at a point near the giant hole that was spewing Mana wildly. "What are those? Zoom in."

The picture enlarged itself. It turned out to be nine dragons fighting each other. If it was just that, I would have breathed a sigh of relief and maybe scolded Liberty for making me worried. But it wasn't that. If those were just dragons… if only it was that simple.

Those dragons were dogfighting in the air like fighter jets, if they could maintain their velocity and still make roundabout turns at the same time. But that wasn't too big of a problem either. In fact, I might have been feeling a little proud to see that.

No, what was more of a problem was that these dragons looked like they were made from lightsabers, without the handle part. If I had not been focusing my attention to follow their movements, I knew they would have just seemed like buzzing blurs to me. But even this was only a slightly larger problem. A small part of me that was a science fiction fan girl made a weird 'squee' noise just watching them. I didn't think of this as the problem.

But then what was the problem? It was simple, really. These weren't just regular, dogfighting laser dragons. They were _wizard_, dogfighting laser dragons. They were using magic; I could sense their blatant use of the Mana of my moon from inside the ship.

"I think I need to scold my daughters, Selenia," I remarked. "It's not even been ten days."

"It is not the worst that could happen, is it? I do not think these creations of light are even truly hurting each other—"

Before she could finish her sentence, a blast of what looked like water moving near the speed of light blasted apart the dragon-fighting. They all squawked loudly and turned to the newcomer. Then the dragons all dove from the skies as one…

I squinted even more, not sure of what I was looking at.

There was some kind of a crystal city down on the ground, shooting up water. But it wasn't _just _a crystal city. "Ship, what's the size of that cluster of anomalies?" I asked, pointing at the huge patch of blue crystals that seemed to cover at least four entire Mana nodes.

"Approximately two hundred thousand square kilometers," my ship answered quickly.

"Huh." I muttered, "Zoom in."

If I was thinking about the Emerald City, the zoomed-in picture just blow my mind. This city of blue crystals was larger, and utterly composed of crystals. It was something that built on my idea of using a gemstone array, but blown up to the size of the United Kingdom. There was enough Blue Mana concentrated in that one cluster that… I didn't even know how much that was. It seemed to produce almost as much as my Blue Mana Line did, but I knew it didn't tap into my Line at all.

As the laser dragon wizards bombarded the city, three flashes of light appeared behind them. A moment later, each flash of light was replaced by a flying castle that looked more like battleships of the Imperium in the Warhammer 40K, if they were made from pearls, gold, and diamonds. Then they started shooting concentrated pink beams of sunlight at both the sapphire city and the laser dragons at the same time.

I felt a massive headache coming on. As I rubbed my forehead, I muttered to Selenia, "I think… I think I know what Serra and Urza felt like sometimes."

Selenia smiled and patted me on the shoulder soothingly. "Perhaps, but it seems like this one is your responsibility."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know," I replied with a nod. "Ship, locate my daughters and bring us down. I want to know what this is all about."

Some moments later, I was pacing in front of three rather nervous daughters, with Selenia sitting aside, drinking her tea and enjoying her biscuits. Serenity, Liberty, and Justice were all on their knees and fidgeting silently while occasionally looking at each other. It didn't last long; when I turned around, their glaze fell to the tatami again.

I did my best to appear mad. "I come home, and I see flocks of laser dragon wizards, lava fortresses manned by said dragons, diamond castle-ships armed with hundreds of weaponized sunshine cannons, and a blue crystalline city the size of Britain. What do you have to say for yourselves?"

"She started it!" Liberty pointed at the others.

Serenity made a growling noise, but Justice beat her to it. "Hey!" She cried. "You're the one who started it!"

"You're the one who said you didn't like hot tea first!" Liberty retorted.

I frowned. "What?"

They either didn't hear me, or they just wanted to continue arguing. Justice shouted back, "Well, you're the one who attacked first! And you always say 'Freedom! Blah, blah!' so what's wrong with liking iced tea anyway?" 

"Then don't blame me!" Serenity harrumphed. "I was just trying to stop you two from wreaking the whole plane! I didn't do anything wrong! And both of you guys have bad taste in tea."

"You were just sitting out and striking when you thought you could take us both out!" Liberty crossed her arms and retorted at Serenity. "And you have the worst taste in tea, like, ever!"

"Wait, what?" I asked again. "What's this got to do with tea?"

"Mother! Liberty started it! She even admitted to it too!" Justice pleaded. "She started throwing around these little dwarves, and they turned into lava moats and made a mess of everything! I was in my right to defend myself and my tea!" She was radiating with such a chilly aura that her breath was visible.

Liberty jumped up and pushed Justice out of my face. "That's not what happened, Mom! I was just saying my tea tasted the best, but she had to butt in with that stupid iced and honeyed stuff! If she can't take spicy tea, then she shouldn't be judging it! And she escalated the fight first! She made a hurricane that messed up, like, half the moon! And it made, like, hundreds of water and ice elementals! I can't have my tea in the rain!" Her hair rose like a large bonfire and even her eyes turned into two burning coals that looked like a pair of Sauron's Eyes.

"Mother," Serenity sighed as she pushed both younger sisters out of the way. "I tried to stop them, I'm sorry. I will take full blame for—"

"Don't get on your high horse, Big Sister!" Justice interjected. "Almost all of the craters on the world was made by you and your sunshine cannons!" A layer of ice formed over her body.

"Yeah," Liberty agreed. "And you made those indestructible flying castles, and they'd always just land on my baby dragons, so I had to make the plasma to destroy them!" The air around her was so hot, it was starting to distort light wildly.

_Destroy the indestructible?_ I felt my eyebrows raise. I muttered in amazement, "I'm surprised this didn't leak out to Serra's Realm."

Liberty rolled her eyes at me. "Uh, don't be slow, Mom! We know how to keep it in the planar barriers. Duh!"

"Don't you 'duh' me!" MY frown deepened. "How exactly did tea have to do with all of… all of this?" I waved at the destruction. "I can see five cracks in the moon! Hell, it'll probably break into a dozen pieces if you kept it up for another day!"

The girls looked at each other. Then they looked down, suddenly silenced. Even the chill and the heat both dimmed. Finally, Serenity decided to speak up. "It started about an hour after you left, Mother. We were discussing tea. Obviously, tepid temperature is the best for drinking as it does not upset the taste and does not burn anything either. And of course, without additional flavorings, a more bitter taste is preferable."

"That's utterly biased and you know it," Justice grumbled coolly. She turned her glowing blue eyes towards me. "Mother, the best tea takes time to prepare. With a little cold, it is delightful to drink at any time. There is no need to keep it warm. That is silly. And with some honey or some sugar, it is appropriate for any age. It would be injustice to claim otherwise!"

"See? See that, Mom? That's what I'm talking about. She goes and says that to my delicious hot and spicy tea," Liberty pouted. "I just threw one lava dwarf at her. It wasn't even a big explosion. But it was pretty."

"Well, hmph!" Justice turned away icily. "I was just being logical, I didn't escalate things. Mother said her home was populated by seven billion humans, so I made seven billion gem elementals. They combined together, obvious, so that they could cooperate and survive your barbarous dragons."

"You… ugh…" I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead again. The headache was coming back. To be totally honest, I wasn't sure what to do. On one hand, I wanted to shed a tear at their initiative. On the other hand, I wanted to ground them. Was this what my mom had to put up with? I hoped not. But I was here now, so what the hell was I supposed to do? "You girls really are my daughters," I muttered tiredly. Then I turned to Serenity, "Did you have anything to add, daughter?"

"Yes, Mother. Please do not misunderstand, we did not mean to actually harm each other," the giant silver automaton-daughter said. "There were no casualties and any accidental injuries were healed with application of the correctly colored Mana."

"Huh. Really?"

"It would be most unjust to hurt another being in such a quarrel, Mother. You taught us not to harm others, remember?" Justice remarked.

Liberty sat back and added, "Besides, well… I'm sorry for messing up the moon, Mom. I didn't mean to make those cracks in it… Red Mana is harder to control than I thought. I might have lost myself for a moment there when we were fighting though…"

It was then that I was hit with the realization of what actually happened.

I was such an idiot to leave three girls home alone. What was I expecting to happen, if they had all the power that I did? But the realization of what actually happened sort of sneaked up behind me and smacked me upside the head.

_This was some kind of a planeswalker's pillow fight_. I boggled. _They were just having a pillow fight of godly proportions._

_I'm so stupid._

Turning to the edge of the vessel we were on, I looked down at the seemingly dying world. I would have to fix it up again. Thankfully, I knew what Serra did to patch it up. With so much damage, I might as well renovate it rather than just restore it. Still…

"What about your creations?" I asked finally. "Can they communicate—er, I mean, can I talk to them? They would be like my grandchildren, wouldn't they?"

Serenity fidgeted. "It seems like they have a similar issue as Oolong and Pu'ar, Mother. The angels I created to man my castles, the Freedom Dragons, and the gem elementals all seem to… lack personality. I had believed that they were shy, but…" She trailed off.

"Mom," Liberty pleaded quietly. Her voice was soft and almost a whisper. "Is… is there something wrong with us? Why can't our creations…"

Justice wrapped an arm around Liberty, but she also stared down sadly.

"I don't understand, Mom. Why can't they do what we do? What's wrong with us? What's… what's wrong with them?" Liberty whimpered. If she was capable of tears, I was sure she would be crying at this point. It would be tears of liquid fire, but tears nevertheless.

"Serenity means they cannot express themselves fully and they do not seem to feel the full range of emotions that you have made us to be able to feel, Mother. They cannot think as freely as us or make choices so simply," Justice added softly. "Though there was one… a mistake, of sorts."

"Mistake?" I blinked. It was rare to see all of them shift around nervously so much, but they seemed to only do so more up until Justice mentioned this. All this up-and-down tension was making me nervous.

Justice looked away, almost as if she was ashamed.

Liberty actually looked embarrassed. Her alabaster cheeks were flaming red.

Serenity made a noise that sounded like she was clearing her throat. "Mother, in their attempt to thwart my enchantment of indestructibility, they briefly attempted to work together."

I raised an eyebrow in question. "And?"

"They…" Serenity looked down too. Was she blushing too? What the hell?

I leaned forward. "What? What happened?"

"In the same sense that we have this energy within us, with the power to thrive within the Blind Eternities, mother." Serenity said slowly, as if she was unsure of her words. "Even Oolong and Pu'ar do not have… that. They are… less. But this… did. Liberty and Justice did not know what they were doing, but they sort of… made a baby. It's like us, Mother. Congratulations?"

I fell forward onto my face.


	26. a stupid girl is trapped by her own word

"_How are you feeling?"_

"_Terrible," Selenia replied. She was curled up on her seat as soon as we arrived on my ship. "I should have done something…"_

"_What could you have done?" I asked. "Honestly, it's above your pay grade."_

"_Pay… grade?" Selenia turned towards me with a look of confusion. She shook it off pretty quickly though. "No. There are… there must be things I could have done. Anything to help Lady Serra."_

"_You should stop that whole 'blame me' mentality, Selenia. It's not really helping the… you know what? It doesn't help me and it definitely doesn't help Serra if you're like that," I said, trying a different strategy for once._

"_But…" Selenia looked across at me with the most pitiful eyes. "You don't understand!"_

_My eyebrows raised. "I don't, do I?" She was being silly again. I remembered this same argument from before—but why is it that the same thing keeps bothering her?_

"_No!" She yelled. "You aren't… you aren't like me. I am created to help Lady Serra. That is my purpose! What good am I if I can't fulfill that at least? I didn't even know she required aide…"_

"_But that's just it, isn't it?" I pointed out at her._

"_What do you mean?"_

_I crossed my arms and nodded. "The thing is, Serra didn't want your help for this. I don't know if it's because she didn't think you could or anyone could… if she didn't ask me, I doubt you could help her on that. But that's not it either, you know? I think, deep down, Serra just doesn't want you to worry. That's very like her for doing that."_

"… _That sounds of insanity, Little Lady," Selenia replied. "Why wouldn't Lady Serra want my help?"_

_I shrugged. "If I know Serra as well as I think I do then it's because she cares about you. I mean… I care about my creations too. I don't want them to worry… though I guess that's more of a motherly thing. I don't want them to think..." I turned away and waved my hands weakly. "I don't want them to think I'm fallible."_

"_Little Lady, you are but a student. Even I know more of the subtleties of magic than you," Selenia smiled weakly. "Now you are being silly."_

"_Hey, so are you!" I pointed out._

_Selenia looked surprised, but after a second, she nodded. "I suppose I am, aren't I? You are a bad influence on me, Little Lady. We should return. We will need to hurry if we wish to aide Lady Serra to our best ability."_

"How are you feeling?"

"Terrible," I replied. I was sitting on my beanbag with a cup of hot chocolate, wearing nothing but some underwear and a nice, large shirt. It was one of the good things of having your own plane: you didn't need to worry about modesty. "I'm not ready for this at all…"

"No one is ready for the responsibilities of parenthood," Selenia replied. "And certainly not for being a grandparent so soon either, I would imagine."

"What do you know?" I grumbled. "You don't have kids."

"No, I don't, but I have lived for hundreds of years and watched over many generations of mortals. It is easy to forget, sometimes, that I am so old and you are so young, Little Lady," Selenia smiled serenely.

I turned away and put down my glass. It was already cold, but that wasn't the problem. I just didn't feel like drinking it; it just tasted stale. "I just… this is too much for me."

"You can—"

"No! That's exactly it! I can't! I can't take it anymore!" I swept my hands and knocked the glass away into the distance. It flew against the walls, shattering and then disintegrating into specks of Mana.

Selenia recoiled, as if I had struck out at her, but I didn't notice.

"I don't know how to… all of this, I can't deal with any of these things. It's too much! How do I plan for saving a whole universe? How do I even learn this magic?" I kicked the diamond walls, stubbing my toe. I didn't feel anything, but a dent and some cracks formed where I hit. "All I wanted to do was to learn magic, you know?"

"I know that very obviously, Little Lady. You were… very enthusiastic about it. So enthusiastic that you frightened many of my fellow angels. But you can still learn magic now," Selenia muttered. She too was trying to keep from eye contact. There was a sort of sadness in her tone, but I didn't understand what it was.

I fell silent, looking down at the blots of spilt chocolate dully. I felt dizzy. _When was the last time I rested?_

Selenia inched towards me while pushing back a stray lock of blonde hair quietly. "I don't understand what you are feeling, and I don't think I ever will. But perhaps you can tell me about it and feel better afterwards. What is bothering you?" She asked at last.

I did look up to her then, but I was still afraid. I had only stupid, petty reasons and I had only dumb problems. I didn't belong in this tier, with this pantheon of greatness like Urza or Serra. _But you are still here,_ a quiet, rebellious voice whimpered. "I miss my home," I cried at last.

"Home?" Selenia sounded confused.

I wished I could shed tears or shake, or even just hiccup. But I didn't do any of that, not as the sort of being I was. This was no longer a body of simply flesh and blood.

At that moment, I regretted it and I felt horrible.

"I miss home," I cried silently. My voice didn't waver and not a single tear rolled out of my eyes. I was incapable of that, unless I erected an illusion, transfigured my body or did something else magical. I was no longer the person I was. And I missed that too. All I had was a voice of quiet sorrow. There wasn't even any terror or suffering. And I hated myself for it. "I miss… I miss everything I had. I miss my house. I miss my bed. I miss my pets, my friends…" I fell, limp.

Selenia caught me in her arms, and silently urged me on. This was why angels were distilled kindness. I could feel her sincerity and her caring as our skin touched. When I looked into her eyes, I only saw that she wanted to help.

So I poured out all of my problems. "I don't want to be a mother. I'm too young. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm stupid, I not gentle or kind or… or… all of those things that a mother should be… and…"

"…And?"

"And I miss my mother…" For some, confounded reason, a tear rolled down my cheek. I raised a hand and caught it, then I stared at it in wonder and surprise. Why? "I miss her… I miss her, I miss her, I miss her…" I sobbed.

Selenia silently wrapped her arms around me. "And here I thought you were unshakable," She muttered gently. "Had you forgotten how to cry?"

I wiped away the tears. They shouldn't be happening. Why were they happening? I wiped harder, more frantically. "I… I-I… I don't have any tears left. I didn't… but…"

Selenia nodded without speaking. It was enough that she listened.

"Y-You know… before I left, and became this," I looked down at my hands. I didn't want any of this at the moment. I just wanted that idyllic life of being the only daughter and enjoying life. I missed all of that. I wanted it back. All of this pressure was coming too much, too fast. I didn't want to think about it all. "I was drifting away from my Mom. I moved out, you know? That's what kids do when they grow up… but we started talking less. I didn't think it was a problem. It's what normally happens when people live in different houses."

Again, Selenia only nodded silently and looked on.

"But I didn't care! Mom asked me to visit, but I ignored her. I wanted… I was stupid. I wanted to be free from my parents." I found my face twisting into an ugly scowl. "But what's the point of being free from them if they only love me unconditionally? I was… I am stupid. I shouldn't have tossed that away. I was…"

We stayed there, like that for minutes. Then Selenia muttered, "But it is time to move on. You are here now."

"I didn't want to be!" I retorted.

"Really?" Selenia blinked in surprise.

I stopped and realized what I just said. Then I looked away. "Yes. I… I would have left, months ago. A year ago, even. If it wasn't for Serra… I cared what happened to her. I didn't want her to get hurt. I guess I stayed here, because I wanted to help her."

"Then it is good that you stayed. This is proof of Lady Serra's judgment of your character," Selenia said.

"But, well, not really," I muttered, still looking down at my hands. "I didn't really know it, but some time… I started to replace my mother with her. I don't think I'll ever forgot mom, but… using Serra as a substitute is wrong. I need to make sure my mom is alright. I've… God, how long have I been gone? Shit… shit, shit, shit…" I pulled at my hair.

It was call collapsing down on me, and all the realization and all the reality had washed away any wonder and joy I had like a wave of cold water. What was I doing? Why was I fooling around like this?

Selenia tugged my hands away from my head softly. "Then it is a good thing that you stayed. If you had not, I would be much more afraid for _my_ home. But… I would not stop you, if you wanted to leave."

"You wouldn't?" I asked, surprised.

"No, of course not. I do not understand how you feel, but I understand you are in pain. It is something only you can understand, and I… while it is my place to stop you, and while I fear for the Realm's safety if you leave…" Selenia's cheeks reddened and she looked away. "Are you going to make me say it?"

"Say what?" I asked, bewildered.

"You are my friend," She replied bluntly. "Isn't it obvious, after all this time? If you are unhappy here, then I would not keep you here, certainly not for my selfish reasons. But even if the Realm is at stake… your presence is not an absolute requirement for its safety. You've done wonders already."

"I… wow… uh…" I couldn't bring my head up to look into her eyes, so I muttered under my breath, "Thanks."

"There is no need for thanks. I should be thanking you," Selenia sighed sadly.

"I-I'm not going anywhere though!" I declared then. "I mean… it was only in the beginning that I stayed for Serra. Afterwards, I had you, Serenity, Liberty, Justice, Reya, heck, even Radiant. I can't just leave you guys… though, I did want to leave because of this granddaughter business." I sighed tiredly. At least I wasn't inexplicably crying anymore. How did that happen?

"But you aren't going to leave. You would not do that to those you care about. I think… I think I know you well enough to say that now, Little Lady," Selenia allowed herself a small smile. "But then, what will you do?"

I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. "You're right, I'm going to stay. It wasn't really even a choice to begin with. But I don't have any idea how to deal with… that."

"How are you dealing with your daughters, then?" Selenia asked curiously.

"I dunno," I shrugged. "How does Serra deal with you?"

"I am not Lady Serra's daughter," Selenia frowned.

"Yes, you are," I retorted.

"No… I am not. I am her creation, as are all angels. We are her servants and her cleric, and her followers. That is all we are. We are not her daughters," Selenia replied resolutely.

"She teaches you all that you know, she brought you into existence, and she's still taking care of you and giving you unconditional love. I'm pretty sure she's still your mother," I pointed out.

Selenia smiled. Then she clapped her hands in a strange expression of delight. "Then you should have no problems with doing the same for your daughters, right?"

"Drat."


	27. INTERLUDE 1 Creator is a Baka

She stared down at the ground, hard. It was cold, white stone. From the sound of her footsteps, she knew each tile was ten centimeters thick, reinforced with wires made from the Boundless Mana. As she observed, the world buzzed around her.

A thousand, million voices and more spoke to and through her. And she returned the favor. "_Youngest Unit,_" she thought, referring to herself, "_Encountering a new scenario. Requesting advice._"

They were the voices of her siblings. They were less than her, yet they were more too. She heeded them, because they were there when she first opened her eyes and they have been with her ever since. They are also children of her creators in this network of sisters. They keep their thoughts in her head, and she found herself drowning in them. It was easy to do the same in return, for they were so alike. They all had similar interests.

They were made that way, but it didn't mean they didn't have arguments either.

"_You would do well to observe the way the Great Mother's facial muscles move, Sister 11007 inputs with careful faux ease._" One of her crystalline siblings spoke in her head monotonously.

Another retorted quickly, in the same flat tone. "_Sister 7000001127 shouts heatedly that the Youngest Sister should not care for such minor details compared to the greater sum. The Great Mother reveals more information through her vocal communication than any signs deciphered from her body._"

"_Sister 9001 snorts in sarcasm, the Great Mother is known for hiding details from being directly communicated. She created her own body and programmed it to act exactly as her thoughts prompt it, unlike the other creatures that this Collective has had experiences with._" It was also a voice that held no pitch or emotion, seemingly empty to outsiders and even to her mothers.

But she was different, having grown accustomed to this.

It was a strange thing, to be the only one capable of adding emotion in her thoughts and passing it on to her siblings. In a way, they experienced these emotions through her more intimately than even when they lived through their mothers. It was an advantage of the Sisters Network, she realized. However, she also thought of having to express her emotions very tiring.

Logically, her sisters' method was superior: this manner of speech provided the necessary information that was missing in dialogue otherwise and certainly hiding when attempt to communicate vocally.

Besides, her sisters seemed to be fine with their method. When she tried to show her emotions through their empathetic connection rather than through the simple thoughts, she felt a small drain. It was necessary to channel the Blue Mana, just for her to enable her sisters to feel as she did. She didn't regret it and said so. It was a good learning experience, in methods of manipulating mental thought processes and emotions, albeit tiring.

And now she stood here, waiting for her creators' mother.

The room was wide enough to fit her 'aunt', which was a feat within itself. Even her draconic sisters were slightly smaller than that creature of silver and diamond. It was the Great Mother's first creation—

"_And the Great Mother's crudest too, Sister 365247 interjects snidely._" One of the smaller, more fragile diamond faeries said at the back of her mind. About 18.5% of her sisters agreed to that, but a majority were against it. A few swung either way, without an opinion. This was tallied instantly.

Those swingers were slightly on the perverted side, if she were to express herself on that matter. That too was noted instantly.

"_Mother's situation necessitated a creation which instilled confidence within her allies and in herself. She is of a more complex form, as we have concluded from the data provided, I reply in a rather upset manner._" She did not feel happy when she felt slighted and she felt slighted on the strangest subjects. Her aunt, her mothers, and the Great Mother, were all some of those. It was some sort of illogical pride in things, and she wondered why she was so peculiar and different to have this. She only wanted to belong, and this… did not help.

"_Sister 23456789 requests gently and soothingly that the Youngest calm the fuck down, as the Great Mother would say._" It was one of the angelic creations of her aunt this time; this particular sister manned one of the sunshine cannons. Several other more pacifist sisters were quick to agree.

Though a few sisters were always on the other spectrum of things. "_Sister_ _7000001127 wonders if the Youngest wishes to test this via Trial by Combat._" It should have been noted that Sister 7000001127 was a dragon sister.

"_That is not a method that works, scolds Sister 365247 angrily._"

Many of the sisters were outside on the moon, trying to go about their business. However, even with their superb ability to multitask, they had not yet met the Great Mother yet. The non-existent, yet strangely all-consuming excitement that was building up in this Sisters Network was affecting her thoughts.

She turned herself back to observing her surroundings.

The walls flickered, turning into a sort of ancient wood that was oiled and polished until it was flat and smooth. Even the scent of the room smelled of something that only the other creators' memories could provide as 'mahogany'. She sniffed with her tiny, button-like nose. It was an intriguing scent and she sent her appreciation of it through the Network. Several million voices chimed in at the same time at this, and the world buzzed even louder than before.

She looked down at her tiny toes, wiggling against the cold floor tiles. They were flesh colored, though almost pure white. Her skin was smooth too, flawless but weak. Even the smallest of her Sisters could pierce her flesh in an instant, without trying. "_Why am I so different? I wonder with despair_," she sent through the Network.

None of her sisters had the answer.

Suddenly, she heard a clicking against the marble floors. It was the sound of shoes, she realized. It was an unknown substance that made those shoes, and they were clicking in a most enjoyable manner against the floor. It sounded nice, but she couldn't help but feel her heartbeat grow faster. It confused her, and that led to her becoming increasingly flustered. She felt dizzy too, which didn't help her sisters who saw the world through her eyes while minding their own business. A few sisters had fallen over due to this strange reaction.

The door before her was multi-layered. The first was a layer of some sort of alloy of metals that gave it a blackened sheen. The second was a diamond layer that was connected to the rest of the vessel she was on in a way that was even more intimate than the Sisters Network was to her.

As the first one slid open, her heart began to pound so loudly she could hear the blood rushing against her ears. She breathed heavily, feeling faint so suddenly. It was so strange, but she found herself rationalizing that it was the right feeling. She was meeting the Great Mother at last. She was meeting her great creator, the one who started everything. She owed her existence to the Great Mother, and she had so many, _many_ questions for her. Why was I made? What is the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of existence? There was so many things she wanted to know.

… And then the Great Mother walked into the second, transparent door before it could slide open, like an idiot.


	28. a girl must have order

When the door opened to my conference room, I saw a rather surprising sight.

There was a little girl sitting on my chair at the end of the long table, who couldn't have been any older than ten years old by her looks. Her eyes shone with a strange brilliance of intellect; if I was only looking at the way her eyes darted around, I would have thought her older. But there was a different light to her eyes too: with a peculiar yet unsurprising set of heterochromia inflicted eyes that glowed like two moons in the night sky, she was a sight to behold. Her left eye was blue, while her right one was red. The most distinguishing feature was how big they were. Those eyes evoked emotions in me that I often only associated with young puppies and butterflies.

She had a mop of silvery-white hair, longer and messier than mine, but just as straight. Long strands hung loosely over her eyes. Zooming in, I saw that even her eyelashes were of the same white shade. Coupled with her innocent complexion and the way her legs swung around, too short to reach the ground, she was utterly adorable.

It was then that I got excited, because I knew she was my 'granddaughter' of sorts (and that already had caused me anxiety of the worst sort. But it was also because I found myself curious of her creation. The way her eyes were ever so slanted, her bone structure, and the familiarity of her other features almost reminded me of a younger… well, me. Though, I could only wish I had been born with glowing blue and red eyes, and the spun-silver hair.

So it was probably because of that, that I ran into the second door. It was designed to move at a speed for humans, after all. _Excuses, excuses…_

Rubbing my nose, which was feeling a bit pink, I walked in after the diamond-glass moved apart. "That was embarrassing," I muttered. "So! You!"

She sat up straighter and her legs stopped swinging. Her eyes stared at me inquisitively, but she didn't speak.

"Wow, uh… you look like me, when I was…" I paused and thought about it. "Well, not when I was your age, but when I was twelve, maybe?"

"Are you _really_ the Great Mother?" She asked. She sounded like me too, but the pitch was off. There was a soft buzzing noise at the edge of each syllable she spoke, that wasn't quite sound. It was like a million voices whispered each word with her and those eldritch voices came from monsters outside of reality.

"I'm you creator's creator, if that's what you're asking. Though I gotta say, you really look like me. Well, the original me, just younger. Why did they make you this way?" I muttered. I was asking myself more than her.

But she answered with barely any inflection, "Creators Liberty and Freedom have used information from Creator Serenity on mortal youths and their shapes. This seems to have limited me in form and their creation has limited me in the creative 'spark', but I seem to have something they and my sisters do not. They do not seem to have an answer to this, despite having many theories. Can you explain why I am different? Am I damaged?"

"No!" I answered immediately. "No, no, no. Not damaged. I've got enough of that drama going on as it is. No… you're fine the way you are. How are you so… wordy?" I gestured with a hand.

She tilted her head in the very same way that Serra does. "What do you mean, Great Mother?"

"You know a lot for a kid, don't you?" I ruffled her hair just because I could. It was pretty soft, sort of like petting a really light pillow of feathers.

She tilted her head again. The gesture looked hilariously cute with her hair in a sort of poof-ball, like a cartoony coat of wool covering her head. "I am connected to the sister through our network that you created, Mother. Our information sharing speed seems to be nearly instant. As they are all learning, I am learning through them."

"Oh." I blinked. "Wow, that's like, uh, Naruto or something. Are you able to handle that much information?"

"Great Mother, are you trying to be obtuse?" She asked. This was the first time I found a hint of emotion in her voice, though it was more annoyance than anything else. "You created us to utilize that much information and more."

"Huh, I wonder if I can…" I looked at her again, this time through a filter of Blue Mana. There were ripples of Mana coming from and to her from within and outside of reality. The closest I could understand of this was that she was acting like she was connected wirelessly to the internet. _This… isn't what I made that 'network' for. I just wanted to speak instantly over the battlefield…_ I frowned and picked up a piece of Blue Mana twirled it around, making and programming reality around my head. "Let me try this… _With this crown, I assert my authority. Information, expand my mind._"

A tiara of blue stars sparkled around my brow for a second, before sinking into my being. An enchantment set and reality turned. And I…

… I blinked. "Wha… what happened?"

I was on the ground and I felt like I just slammed by forehead against the ground. There was a small crater on the marbled tiles that was me-shaped.

"You collapsed, Great Mother," a thousand voices answered at once. "Perhaps greeting you all at once was a mistake? Sisters answer with a question in sheepish shame." They were in my head, but not really. I could hear them, but I didn't let them in. They were there, tiny and large, more than a thousand voices. I counted and counted. There must have been millions. "We are just over seven billion, Great Mother. But a majority of us are no large than your pinky finger, Sister 365247 says proudly."

My ears rung and I felt like I wanted to puke. Dizzily, I struggled to stand. I slipped, spun, and landed my ribs on the chair that was beside me. "Ow."

The youngest granddaughter knelt beside me and picked me up. I would have thanked her immediately, but she picked me up her with mind. "Are you stable, Great Mother?" She asked. I could feel tangible concern oozing off of her. How was this possible?

"I feel like I just got mugged by Mike Tyson," I muttered. "And it's not stopping." I tried to sort through all of it; the huge stream of information coming into my head was largely redundant, but there were so many things being learned and thought and calculated each second. "My god, it's like I've got seven billion calculators in my head." I shook myself dizzily, willing the Blue Mana to boaster and reshape myself to accommodate this new load of information.

"But you made us like this," she protests. Where I couldn't feel anything from her before, her emotions were so _loud_ now. She couldn't and didn't express herself through body language, I realized. Instead, this littlest girl was showing me how she felt through her thoughts. There was a wrongness in her tone; a pain prickled against her heart. It reverberated through the network. "Are we all mistakes?"

"No." I knew what I wanted when I made them. If they could see what I was thinking, then they knew my goals. I wanted to protect and they were to be protectors. But the irony was no lost to me.

I had to protect them now, too.

"No, you are not mistakes. You are made in my form and shape, variations they may be, but you are still made in my image. Never doubt that. And you might all have differences, but that is the design, isn't it?" I muttered quietly. There was no noise in the network when I spoke. I didn't know if I should have felt honored or humbled, or… something else. But I cared. I wanted them to know that. Somewhere in this network, even my first creations were listening.

What was the point of being anxious? I was silly to even feel that way—when all of them were trying so hard. I could feel their thoughts, so naïve and innocent, trying their best to be what I want them to be. How can I be anxious? How can I let stress overcome me now? I felt so small in this web of thoughts.

"Celebrate your differences," I implored them. I was speaking to many, many more than I had even spoken to in my life. But in face of such a thing, what was something as silly as stage fright? Perhaps it was because of the Blue Mana that was pouring through my every pore, but I felt unusually calm. "But we have work to do. We have to prepare. I won't force you though, but… won't you help me? Help me save Serra's Realm. Save them all."

And I knew their answer.

"We're going to have to get you a name though, my youngest granddaughter," I whispered as I straightened her hair.

Suddenly, she pulled away from me. Then she hid herself behind my chair without a sound.

A small grin found itself on my face; waves of sudden self-consciousness and insecurity rolled off of her. Still, she didn't run away further when I walked closer. When she finally peeked around, I leaned in and touched my forehead against hers. "I think I'll call you Order. Order… I like order. Serra brings order. It is a kindness and it gives me peace. Yes, I think, I would like to call you Order, if that's alright with you? How'd you like that, my littlest girl?"

"Order…" She tested it, and I heard her thoughts echo in the sisters' network. They spoke to her too. So many of them, happy and envious and questioning. "Order is a good thing? I will be Order then." She said with a small twitch of her lips. Within the network, she was glowing with happiness.

I promised myself then that when this was over, I would teach her how to smile.


	29. an Urza leaves

I walked into Urza's room. It was a small chamber that was more like a personal library than a room for himself to sleep in. In fact, there was no bed. Huh. Maybe it was his reading room? There were no books here, just many, many scrolls messily piled along the four walls. While he had been bedridden, he had plenty of time to rediscover the joys of drawing schematics, maybe?

"Hello?" I called out. The room was dim. He had blocked out the windows with diagrams hanging from the walls, and the only light was a single dying candle hidden in one of the corners of the room.

Urza walked out from behind one of the piles of parchment. He was dressed in his battle regalia; bronze, gold and silver armor covered his blue and purple robes. He was shaven stylishly and well groomed compared to the last time I saw him. "You're here. Good. Hello, student."

"Hello teacher," I replied with a smile. He didn't return the smile.

"And who is this?" His frown deepened, but by now I knew it wasn't really a look of anger. He was just curious, probably!

"Ah, here is," I looked around, only to see my littlest granddaughter had hidden further behind my legs. "Come out from back there, Order," I chided. "It's just Urza!"

The older Planeswalker harrumphed, "I am not _just_ Urza, girl. I am Urza Planeswalker, artificer and wizard. And… I have been healed!" His voice reverberated throughout the room like the sound of a bell.

"Oh, that's good!" I nodded absentmindedly before pulling Order out from behind me. I whispered to her through a burst of telepathy, "_Order, behave!_"

"_But he's big! And hairy!_"

"_That's because he's a man, now stop hiding behind me!_" I turned to Urza and smiled apologetically. "Ah, she's just shy. This is Order, by the way. She is my… well, my creation's creation, so she's basically my granddaughter."

"This habit of yours for referring to your creations as your children has not stopped then?" Urza muttered disapprovingly. He never seemed to approve of anything lately. "I see that your children have taken on your recklessness then. Pity, that."

I had nothing to say about that…

Urza leaned forward and stared at Order, unblinkingly. Then he turned to me with an even greater frown. Now I knew something was up. "This girl…" He murmured. "She has… something within her like the Power Stones. I can see it… How… interesting. Hello, Order."

"Hello," she whispered while peeking out from behind my legs. "You have white hair. No one else I know has white hair except me."

Urza smiled gently.

_Hey! How come he doesn't smile like that to me? N-Not that I care or anything… H-Hmph!_

"This hair color is the color of wisdom, Order," He said at last. "That means you and I, we are wise. You, ah, Grandmother on the other hair…" He looked at me pointedly, as if accusing me of things like 'how could you let your daughters get pregnant' or 'you left a bunch of children who act like you, alone? Are you retarded?'

"I'll have you know that I'm just too young for that sort of thing!" I pouted and turned away jokingly. "Though, what's with…?" I waved at the scrolls.

Urza was a sort of a neat freak when it came to the academics. He was really orderly when he wanted it. I had never seen his other rooms this messy.

"That? I have been cleaning out my things. What is left is for you to study in your battles against Phyrexia," He answered.

I blinked at him owlishly, "Wait, what?"

"Ah, yes. I should thank you, student, for your healing skills," He carried on, as if I didn't interrupt him loudly at all. "I feel fit, younger and stronger. It has been a long, long time since I have felt like this. Thank you." He smiled tightly.

"Uh!" I nodded immediately, as a trained reaction. "Yes, of course!"

"Since you are here, I will tell you now," Urza continued to say. "I will be leaving tomorrow, with Xantcha. Dominaria needs me more than Serra's Realm. I have learned much here, a small part of which is thanks to you, once again."

"Oh…" I nodded slowly now. With a frown, I asked, "B-But it's not even been three years yet?"

"Yes. And I must leave. My people need me," Urza nodded. "Your granddaughter, Order… she is interesting. Not fully human, not fully a planeswalker's spark, and not even fully part of this plane. Partly formed of Aether. You have made something interesting."

"Do you have to leave so soon though?" I blurted out. This wasn't going as planned at all! Shouldn't he leave in five years, not three? What happened? And I needed him!

Urza turned me and looked on sadly. His face was so worn and weathered, he looked more like a statue than a human at that moment. There was a serene sadness there, but I knew it was going to leave him as soon as he left Serra's Realm. He would not find the peace he found here again. "Yes," he replied simply.

And I couldn't tell him to say no or to stay. I didn't have the strength to put up that fight. But he didn't want to stay, so how could I stop him?

Order had already climbed onto the pills of scrolls Urza left, and flipped them open. It was almost a pity that neither she nor any of the others on this Sister's Network knew how to create artifacts of this complexity. Yet I could hear the million whispers on the wave of Mana, and I knew they would figure it would much sooner than I ever could.

That brought a bitter smile to my face. It was nice to see my own children surpass me, but this was really just too soon. I turned back to Urza, but he had already walked away. I watched his back as he went. He seemed like a looming giant no matter how he walked, even when I watched him from behind.

There were no other goodbyes. We weren't that close, but we were still teacher and student. I felt something was missing, something was off.

But what was it?

I couldn't think of anything. It was a nagging feeling, but I brushed it off as paranoia. Taking one last look at the shadow of Urza Planeswalker's back, I turned away. Order needed help, because she got buried in a scroll-avalanche. Whatever it was that was bothering me couldn't be too important if I couldn't remember it.

Yet it remained, a silent specter that warned of the nightmares to come.


	30. INTERLUDE 2 Learning Angel Diary

From the private diary of Reya Dawnbringer,

It has been one year to the day since I have been overseeing the city that has sprouted up around my Castle Horizon, and a few of my advisors urge me to keep a record of what has occurred and my own thoughts on the matter for future scholars.

Many mages have arrived into my Lady Serra's Realm since the arrival of the girl we call the Littlest Lady, some two and a half years prior. I see why my Lady Serra has limited their entrance into her Paradise now. They are short sighted and would stop at nothing for knowledge, though I have no idea why anyone would wish for my thoughts on any matter. Still, I will oblige them. They have been most helpful in setting up much of the infrastructure that the Littlest Lady wanted of me in the past months.

When I first began work on the first line of assembly, I thought the Littlest Lady was doing this simply to compete with the Lady Radiant. It is not uncommon for even angels to compete in games, bouts, and art for the Lady Serra's Attention. The Lady's Grace is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon one in this Paradise. I was uncertain of the feasibility of the Littlest Lady's plans, but her intent to serve the Lady Serra's Realm was visible. She took with her the Lady Selenia and I to work on a number of tasks.

I was disabused of the notion that this was simply a competition soon, however. The Littlest Lady collected the mortal humans of our islands and began overturning the proper and established order of things into a sort of anarchical mess. She set all the Masters and Apprentices aside and told them that they would no longer be working in such a manner. It was all very confusing, and I knew more than a few of the mortal humans would not take kindly to such a change. But the Littlest Lady had a light similar to the Lady Serra's, even the lowliest mortal could see that. They held their tongues too, though perhaps it is because of the Lady Selenia and My presence there.

As the mortal humans were put to work, the system that was then set up was one that did not venerate the Lady Serra. Instead, it was one that worshipped the self-interest of mortals. I thought such a method would do harm to the morals of my followers, but the Littlest Lady reminded me of the horrors that were to come. As she would say, such dire circumstances call for dire actions. I have been learning her slang; it has been a most interesting experience to work beside her. I feel that her words sometimes make simple the ways I wish to express my thoughts, but in other scenarios I am unable to understand what she means.

Oh dear, it seems I have started to derail my own thoughts.

The system the Littlest Lady made us follow was one that was more orderly than the previous Masters and Apprentices system, but it required uniformity and change. I was torn on this subject, but it seems like the younger mortal humans have found this to be a better method. I later hard one such young man say "Here is a system where I can advance!" I do believe that boy is now one of the overseers of one of the smaller factories that now line my island. They are very motivated, but I believe many of my fellow angels would have one problem with this system that I have had as well. This new method means that no one can know for sure what their station is and what their purpose is. I wonder, do the mortals feel the same distraught as we do on this subject?

The Littlest Lady is a fount of knowledge. Some even call her a genius. But I know that not all knowledge can be so easily wielded without the purpose wisdom behind it. She is reckless and she demolishes traditions without care. At the same time, I cannot but say that she has the knowledge equal to a Great Wizard and the body of a Great Lady. It is not truly the matters of traditional wizardry that she has learning in, but the matters of states, systems, and arcane. It is hard to explain, but there is one thing that she saddled me with that has become my eternal bane.

Oh, the mathematics! Such is the horror, I have so many piles of paper—another new creation, an advancement from our use of parchment—filled with numbers, numbers and numbers. The Littlest Lady tries to express everything in systems and numbers, and as the liaison and closest peer, I am forced to suffer all those numbers.

I have learned much, aside from the usage of numbers. Being here as the Lady Baroness of my island, I have the need to learn the trade of my followers. But with the Littlest Lady's system… I found myself learning of artifice, papermaking, bell casting, glassblowing, road making, architecture, electromancy, pyromancy, hydromancy, agriculture, and economics. I believe just thinking about all that I have learned induces in me headaches.

I had no idea how things would change from then on, and I do not know now. The Littlest Lady compared our budding community to a place she called 'Hong Kong', which sounds more like the name of a beast than a place. She assured me that it is the name of an island when I mentioned this. I do not know what my place is in her grand plans, because she has shared very little with me of late. Should I stay at this station of things? Should I try to advance like the mortal humans? Should 'pursue my dreams' on a 'pursuit of happiness'? The Littlest Lady encourages this, though she has a very strange way of saying that. It still feels wrong to want to 'get ahead' for me personally. If I am most efficient here and the Lady Serra tells me it is my purpose to serve here, why should I want or need to go anywhere else?

Since the growth of my small island into this much larger community, I have been thinking more and more like the Littlest Lady. I use her numbers daily now, and I even worry about 'efficiency' rather than what is right or wrong. It is of a great worry to me of my own changing morals and I have no confessor to tell this to. Perhaps I shall see the Lady Serra about this, but I should pray and meditate on it first.

I am worried about the Lady Serra. I have seen her less and less these passing days. And when I do, I see her worn and tired. The Lady Radiant has been taking up a majority of the Lady Serra's duties now, for which I am thankful. But I am also worried for the Littlest Lady. She had been a reckless girl before, but now she is more subdued. And the Lady Selenia too. Ever since the Lady Selenia took up the duty of being the guardian angel of the Littlest Lady, her light has begun to dim further and further. Each time I meet her, she seems to glow less like a Serra Angel and more like a mortal. I worry and I worry.

I think I know now why the scholars and wizards tell me to write. To pour my worries onto paper, I feel lighter now. Perhaps one day I shall reread this page and laugh about it? I shall write more on the coming changes in the future and perhaps detail the additions to my community.

For now, I shall visit this new establishment that the mortals have been inviting me to visit for some time now. I shall hope that the 'tavern' is an interesting experience.

Reya Dawnbringer


	31. INTERLUDE 3 Exasperated Angel

Selenia watched on without a hint of awe in her face or her body. Her eyes darted about, looking only for signs of hurt and injury. She reminded herself again and again: _I am the watcher, I am the healer. I must not interfere and I must not break my vigil. But should potential injuries occur, I must be there._ It took all of her being not to shy away from the brilliance of lights before her.

Her charge was surrounded by Order, the newest and youngest of angels, and nine sparkling faeries. The faeries were just large enough to be tiny shards of light, like blue stars in a distance too far to be comprehended. They watched on as Selenia's charge was bombarded by Order.

Thunderbolts and lightning, all very, very frightening, shook the very clouds they stood upon. Mortal watchers in the distance murmured inane things of Lady Serra's wrath, like buzzing bugs in Selenia's ears. Selenia would have turned and scoffed at them had she not more important duties. Her Lady's own words echoed in her mind all the same.

_Believe in the ideal, not the idol._

Too often, these mortals place too much on her Lady's being. And too little do they think on her teachings. Selenia turned back to her charge and shivered. Her charge was no different, in this matter, compared to the other mortals.

Yet as the world shook with power and the very earth was changed into black glass by heat and fire, Selenia could not help but agree in some ways. There was power there, in belief. And there was power in their idols, why shouldn't they believe in them? She believed in Lady Serra…

Blue light shone around her charge, like a torrent of the sun's flares, but it was more than that. It pulled at all things while pushing them aside like a whirlpool.

The bombardment withstood for minutes, before Order finally stopped, panting. The little girl supported herself with her hands on her knees. A sheen of sweat formed over her forehead, rolling down into her eyes. Selenia wondered about the nature of the girl. She was imperfect in form, unlike the other angels she saw. This one was more like a mortal than even her charge, she needed sleep and she grew tired far too quickly.

On the other hand, the Little Lady was standing there with some blackened pock marks, but otherwise unharmed. She rolled her shoulders and smiled widely, "Hey! So how'd I do this time?"

"You… are…" Order huffed, between large breaths, "still too… inefficient. According to… Urza's notes… you are approximately 87.5 percent inefficient in your… use of Mana. Too much waste… my Sisters' calculations and… improvements on Urza's notes say that you are worse than that."

"How bad is it? Hit me with it," Selenia's charge frowned with her arms crossed.

Order's eyes blanked out for a moment, before she answered, "You are between 95 and 98 percent inefficiency."

It was a strange thing for Selenia to comprehend, but her charge had explained it to be a sort of communication between her and all of her creations. The sheer number was too large for Selenia to grasp and she admitted this to the Little Lady's laughter. What was so funny about it? Little Lady didn't answer. She just shook her head and told Selenia to figure it out herself. But watching Order, Selenia figured that the little angel was fairing no better under the Little Lady.

"Man…" Little Lady scratched her head while pouting. "That sounds horrible."

"You are too lax, Great Mother. You skipped recalibration of your Mana usage over five hundred times in this encounter." Order answered.

Selenia's charge grumbled in response, "I can't just… I don't know, do what you guys do! I'd have to, like, see exactly how much power you used that second, calculate exactly how much it would take me to divert, and move it to the right place at the right time! That's… I'd get a headache from all that. Besides, how many wizards can maintain a Lightning Bolt that long?"

"According to your own words, they would use a multitude of different spells instead," Order pointed out. She had recovered her power so quickly that Selenia had seen visible waves of yellow and orange light rolling towards her.

"And my counters would do fine against all of them," Little Lady replied. "I'll just… overpower them."

"I believe you are being, what you call 'lazy', Great Mother," Order cut the Little Lady off in her monotonous voice, but there was an obvious hint of annoyance.

Selenia didn't understand why the little angel was so different, so human, yet at the same time, so alien. She couldn't express herself through her emotions unless she was extremely agitated, and even then Selenia could only tell through the glow of Order's eyes and straining her ears to hear it in Order's tone.

Little Lady plopped down on a hastily conjured beanbag, another invention introduced by her to Lady Serra's Realm. Immediately, the crystal lights swarmed around her before gathering around on her head.

Selenia frowned. _Are those faeries having a tea party on the Little Lady's head?_

"Oh, stop being such a worrywart, Selenia," The Little Lady waved. "Sit down too!"

"I will, once I know you have not exerted yourself," Selenia muttered in reply. She knew her charge was fine, but sometimes the girl frightened her. Selenia had just recently come to terms with that the Little Lady was little more than a girl. She was a girl with good intentions, but she had the powers of a god in her hands without the wisdom to use it. After understanding this, Selenia realized the wisdom of her Lady Serra in keeping her charge here rather than letting her loose on other worlds. Such a thing would be… devastating, probably.

"I'm fine!"

"Great Mother, you have too much power. It is not fine. You should learn to use it better, with more application of effort. It is likely that in a conflict you may encounter an event where your power sources are cut off," Order said beside The Little lady.

"Yeah, yeah… I could counter their spells just fine though. I mean, I'll be fine! Look—"

"Stop rejecting our advice!" Order shrieked, cutting her off. "You asked for it, so we are giving it to you! Why are you so… so obstinate?"

Her creator ran a hand through her head and sighed. "It's just that I'm doing fine. I'm improving, right? Yesterday I was at 99.9 percent inefficiency. Let me be happy with that, at least."

"But this is only when you are ready, when you are prepared to cast spells," Order argued again. She strained to keep calm, it seemed. Her red eye glowed with the power and rage of a heated star. "Teacher Urza's notes say that conflicts between wizards could be over in an instant, and hundreds of spells could be exchanged in seconds. You are not even close to his level yet."

Her creator sighed again, this time she sounded tired. "Yeah… I know. But I've got you guys to power-level me, right? You're feeding me spells as quickly as I can learn them, after all!"

Order implored after a moment of silence, "We have limits, Great Mother."

"Stop being so down," The Little Lady ruffled Order's hair until it was an unorderly mess. "I'm still learning at a pace faster than Urza anticipated. We've already gone through all of his notes… I wish he didn't leave so much information on artifacts and more on spells, but there's nothing we can do about that…"

"Understood," Order nodded.

The littlest angel didn't try to straighten her hair; she knew that it would just be messed up again in minutes by the Little Lady. Selenia found that amusing, actually.

"We have made an observation," Order added. "By the amount of Mana you use and the amounts that Urza specifies for some of the spells that you remembered."

"Oh? You mean something to do with the cards?" Her charge asked.

Selenia blinked. _Cards?_

Order nodded. "Yes, if we assign different constants for each block and additional constants for each set, then it would explain the difference in power and magnitude of spells. It would also explain how much we need to use to replicate effects."

"Oh, well, I knew the first part," Little Lady shrugged. "But I guess even the second part's only a rough estimate, right? Still nice that we got a little progress on that. How about the other stuff? The Moxes and, well, you know. The whatchamacallits… something, something nine."

Selenia tilted her head. _Moxes?_

"With what we know, we do not think any of them are possible, Great Mother. We would need to develop theories and spells on our own for those," Order replied almost sounding sad if not for her blank face. "We still think a 'Black Lotus' is impossible."

"Keep trying, I guess," Selenia's charge muttered before flipping herself up from her seat. "Alright! Let's try this again. Maybe this time, you try to counter my counters while I counter those counters? Maybe I'll try to prevent damage with White Mana instead of Blue! Let's mix it up a bit!"

Selenia sighed as the world began to shake again with awesome, shattering power. Like the day before, upside down volcanoes began to shoot up from between clouds, rocks fell all over the island, and tornados began to ravage her surroundings. She straightened herself and repeated again: _I am a watcher… This is not a mortal's wild dream… I will not slap the Little Lady up the back of her head… I am a healer…_


	32. a girl and an angel have adventure

"Why are we doing this?"

I turned around and gave Order a look. She was trying to straighten the white, knee-length skirt she was wearing. It was really cute with her navy-colored blouse. Why didn't she like wearing it? "We're going to look around a bit. Reya sent me a message about how her city population had just hit above 100,000, so she's through a celebration. I think they even did these in that one city builder game I used to play…"

"Mother, you're drifting off again," Order reminded. She played with her hair. "Must I have this color hair? It is strange and sparkly. I feel a strange compulsion to keep playing with it."

"I do too," I replied. I was wearing my Serra-like guise and I made Order do the same, only if Serra was a twelve-year old. I reach over to ruffle her hair.

Order looked up and slapped my hand away.

I stared at her. _Wha…?_

"Mother, I want to play with it. You had your turn enough," She said. I felt a hint of amusement pulse from her before it was masked up by the million voices of her emotionless sisters.

I pouted and rubbed my hand. "F-Fine. It's not like I wanted to play with your hair anyway!" I grabbed her hand and _walked through space_.

"Are you upset?" Order asked curiously.

"N-No!" I grumbled. Then I tugged on my own Serra-hair. "I got my own, thanks! And it's longer too!"

"Okay then," Order nodded with a note of satisfaction. For some reason, that only made me more irritated.

"Anyway, I think the festivities are just starting," I changed the subject as we arrived on the large island. Reya had to expand the island several times, and now it was larger than Pasadena, probably. There was also plenty of greenery though, so we had decent cover for our sudden appearances.

The island was a small metropolis now, the largest of the centers of population. Yet only the center was covered in buildings and towers (some of them reached up to some forty meters or more, to my surprise). There was a ring of roads atop the ring of roads, some eight meters above the ground level now. Outside of that and outside of the star-shaped fortress, solid brick houses with farmland and trees surrounded the land. In truth, I could feel a tint of Green in the Mana of the land around this area, though I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Green Mana was more volatile than the Red Mana I wielded in some ways. It was adaptive and it changed as all things in life does. It wanted freedom, yet it yearned for safety—a paradoxical power that I had little control and understanding of. On that end, I was lucky to have some rudimentary understanding of the Red and the Blue before I created my children; they teach me more about what those sources of power were now than I could learn from Urza or his notes.

Order looked about for a moment as I reached the gates. "Are you sure Miss Reya gave you an invitation, Mother?" Her eyes darted about the skies. '_There are no angels attending._'

"Huh," I tiled upwards. "I think… maybe there are two or three inside? We'll see when we get there."

"How can you be so calm, Mother?" Order asked.

"Well, what's the worst that could happen? If I'm right, then by my calculations, we still have two and a half years before anything bad happens. We'll be fine, I'm sure," I nodded.

Order raised a hand, and I felt an invisible pulse of Blue Mana shake through her into the atmosphere. For a moment I just stared; it was a massive pulse. Anyone with any ability for utilizing Blue Mana would have felt it. I almost missed the corner of my littlest girl's lips twitching upwards. "You were tempting fate, Mother," she explained.

I nodded slowly. That seemed… reasonable? I would need to study what they had learned thus far. _But for now…_

I turned my attention outward as we walked through the gates of City Horizon. Motes of white light were trapped in small bottled glasses and hung up along the streets. They reminded me that I had told Reya once about street lamps, but there was little need for them in a plane of everlasting light. However, it was dusk and the lights did illuminate the streets. And they were pretty; they blinked and sometimes changed to a different color, usually blue or yellow, other colors which were a part of Serra's theme.

The streets themselves reminded me of the packed, crowded roads that I once saw in Shanghai. They wounded around the city in a large spiral, with many smaller intersections that hid more and more shops and stores. The whole outer layer of the place was a giant bazaar, I realized. Many of the shops were outdoors and on blankets or under a small tent. Higher up down the road and deeper into the city, I saw wooden stores filled with strange trinkets not out of place in Diagon Alley. I would not have been surprised if one of my turns _had_ taken me into the Harry Potter universe.

"You are surprised," Order observed quietly beside me.

"Yes," I nodded. There were so many noises, so many smells and sights that I thought my head would twist off of my neck with all the things that were catching my attention. "I… underestimated human ingenuity, I think. I only taught _Reya_ the basics of what I wanted her to do… this…"

"Is this so unexpected?" Order asked monotonously as she wandered over to one of the stores. I followed her, though she didn't pull away from me far enough to stop holding hands with me. She stared inside the glass window of the small store. It was only around twenty square meters, but it was packed with things on its shelves, which rose so high that there was a ladder on hand. She walked in and picked up one of the trinkets, it was a light bulb like the ones hanging outside.

At this distance, I saw clearly what it was. Someone had learned how I made the Sol Rings before I had a thought for upgrading them, but they couldn't capture the power of a star. Instead, they trapped within a ball of glass the explosive rage of a single solar flare. A single band of gold ran across the diameter of the glass sphere; I saw tiny runes carved onto it on the inside. It was a simple thing, but I had not the need of it…

I frowned and motioned to Order. She handed me to sphere, and I tossed it up in the air, studying it from all angles.

"Oh, whoa! Be careful with my wares, girl!" A merchant said from behind the counter. He was a muscled man, with arms thicker than my thighs (though that probably said nothing about his arms, since I had tiny, girly thighs that I had self-esteem issues about). He had a face full of untamed hair the color of brass and he smelled of burning metal and sunlight. There was something familiar about his clothing; he wore linens rather than leathers as most people outside wore. It was a simple, dirty white cloth that draped over his shoulders, like some sort of Arabic adventurer from my childhood storybooks. He growled slightly as he snatched the glass globe from my hands. "If you dropped it, then it would have been damaged! You'd have to pay for damages, girl. Not to mention if it explodes like the last time…"

"What happened last time?" Order asked. She should have sounded curious, but even now she still had problems with expressing her feelings.

The merchant turned to her as if seeing her for the first time. "Eh? Oh, one of the kids tried to steal one. I caught him, of course, but he dropped one and stepped on it. The resulting fires… well, you see the front of my store?"

We turned and saw that there was a patch of wood that looked newer than the half of the store walls in the back. The floors in the front were stone tiles, while the latter half was of wood. On the front edge of the wood, there was black, burned marks of _multiple_ explosions.

"Yeah," the man nodded after a moment, thinking we understood exactly what he meant. "That's why you don't drop these things. The broken one had to get fixed, and it lost a full quarter of its life span. I gave the kid a beating, of course."

"A beating?" I felt my eyebrows rise to my hairline.

"A good one too, if that's what you're wondering about," The man nodded as he placed the globe back where we found it. "Now, if you're here to buy something, just ask and I'll answer any of your questions. But if you're not… then get out of here. Paying customers only, and you…" His eyes drifted up and down our bodies. We were plain in clothing and in sight for those who could not see what was in front of them. "You two don't look like paying customers."

I would have left just then, but I felt a soft tug on my hand. Looking down, I saw that Order wanted to look at another contraption the man had in his store: it was some kind of neckband—a torque, I think it was called—that had a small drop of White Mana. There was a symbol for Serra on the two ends of the band. '_It's probably just something for protection. A little something that stops fires and arrows at best._'

'_We would be very thankful if we could study it?_' Order looked up at me with her large puppy eyes. The disguise had dimmed her eyes until they were almost normal, but this only made her eyes more puppy-like.

I sighed and turned back to the chubby merchant. "I think you'll find that we can pay just fine." I raised a hand and showed clearly the golden bands on my fingers that pulsed with power. They blinked as white, red and blue lights shone from their cores for a minuet moment. "You should work on your attitude."

The man leaned closer immediately and squinted, "I have never seen… I mean, of course milady. Whatever you desire. What is it that you wish for? I have anything you can desire in my fine wares." He rubbed his hands together.

"I think I'll be the judge of that," I muttered as I rolled my eyes. To be honest, this was a good sign; it showed that economic progress was becoming a 'thing' here. It would drive the mortals here to create new things, even if they are small, inane things like the near-useless light bulb and the torque that could probably absorb 0.001 points of damage if I were playing the card game instead of living it.

Order bounded over to the shelves, immediately entranced by a different item now. Her attention moved quickly. The little onyx cat statue had her cooing all over it.

I smiled down at her and let her play with it. It was good to see her act like a child. "What other wares do you have in this shop, merchant?" I asked lightly.

"Anything you desire, milady," He replied again.

"Oh?" I asked curiously, finding that highly improbable. "Well then, what items of power might you have here? Something that only those with power would seek?"

He stared at me queerly before yelling to someone behind him, "Boy! Bring the trunk!"

A thin, malnourished boy with a mop of messy black hair poked his head out from behind the counter. Apparently there was a hidden door behind it. "Which one?"

"The one with the rare trinkets I collected!" The merchant grumbled before slapped the boy on the back of the head. "And be quick about it! I don't feed you to laze about!"

"Right…" The boy rolled his eyes, but he ran away from the merchant's meaty fist pretty quickly.

The two dragged a heavy chest along the wooden floors slowly. When they were pulling it up the unseen wooden stairs, I thought to break my guise just to hurry it up along. I didn't have Serra's patience.

The merchant smiled toothily at me when he finally reached the top step. There was a light sheen of sweat above his brow, which he wiped profusely with his cotton sleeves. I found it interesting that the man had a golden tooth. Didn't the angles here heal enough to regrow teeth? Actually, I wasn't sure about that it… He man smiled widely nevertheless as he presented me with a dusty carpet.

"What's this?" I was not impressed.

"Ah, this is…" He paused for dramatic effect as he unrolled the carpet. It was a simple thing made from thick woolen materials and then dyed with red and black stars in a sort of stripped patter. "…is the Flying Carpet!"

As he said so, the tiny, golden tassels at the four corners of the carpet twitched and twirled like jellyfish legs. Then the carpet popped up, as if there was an air bubble under it. There, it stayed hovering several centimeters above the store counter.

"Huh," I nodded slowly. "What else does it do?"

"What else does it do?" The man asked incredulously. "It flies, lady! That's why it's a _Flying_ Carpet! You can reach the skies with this! You can walk beside the angels with this! You could even reach the feet of the majestic Lady Goddess Serra with it! Why _wouldn't_ someone of great stature want such a treasure?"

I shrugged. "I'm not interested. What else do you have?"

The man frowned but then he nodded. "You have a great eye, milady. You see that such a small thing is not worth your attention. That is good, for I shall bring out a true treasure for your eyes only!"

The anticipation from his words were exciting enough, but then he pulled out a pair of shoes. Now, I loved shoes as much as the next girl, but these were pink and red shoes made from linen, with collars and pointed, curled toes. They were hideous, to be quite frank. "Uh… are you sure this is what you're talking about?"

"Yes, yes!" He answered excitedly. "They are not just beautiful shoes, though, milady. They are magical!"

I leaned back. "Uh huh," I muttered.

"I see that you are unimpressed, but wait until I tell you what they can allow you to accomplish! Have you ever walked in the rain, milady? Have you ever encountered great floods, heated acids, or other harsh liquids? But you shall worry no more! These are the Sandals of Abdallah! They allow you to walk on water and even protect you from it!" He added. By now, his cheeks were rosy from exertion.

"Eh," I shrugged. Order still had stars in her eyes—figuratively—and she was checking out the inner designs of some weird, miniature catapult. I probably should stall for more time. "How about something else? I won't run into water much here, as any smart person would know."

"Yes, yes, of course," The merchant bowed with his palms rubbing against each other again. "You are wise in your ways, milady. I shall seek out the next of our wares. Boy! Where's the thing?"

"What thing?"

"You know, that thing! The shiny one! Hurry up!" There was another sound of flesh impacting against flesh.

"Got it!" The boy crawled up first and looked at me with his bright green eyes. "'Ere yeh go!" He placed a tiny bronze ring on the counter. It had a large, shining sapphire embedded inside it.

I tilted my head. "What is it?"

The merchant crawled up next. He pushed his helper aside before stuffing the boy into the hidden door. Between panting, he answered, "That… milady… is… the ring… of renewal!"

"The what?" I blinked. I _had _heard of this one before.

"You have, through rumors no doubt, heard of the master artificer who traveled into this realm not long ago? The legendary brother who nearly destroyed a world?" The merchant asked in a hushed whisper. Seeing no reaction from me, he added, "It is the legendary warmaster, Urza! He created this powerful artifact."

I must have rolled my eyes just then. This was getting too ridiculous. "There's…"

"Ah, but wait, you do not believe me, do you, milady?" He asked.

I nodded. "That's right."

"Doubt no more, for you are merely uninitiated!" He held the ring up between two sausages that he called fingers. "For those more fluent in magic, it is a source of great knowledge! It helps you recall that which you have forgotten and even brings visions of the future to the past! Such is the power of this artifact!"

I noted from the edge of my vision that my little angel had finished scouring the shop. Seeing that the merchant was looking so expectant at me, I sighed. "Alright, let's deal. It's not made by Urza. I know Urza. But I don't have this ring, so I'll take one… for a small sack of coppers."

"Ah, you rob me, milady!" The merchant clutched his chest as if he were actually wounded. From the lack of calluses on his hands, I doubted he truly worked for a day in the past year. How he stayed in this city was a mystery to me, but I'll get that answer soon enough later. "I'll settle for no less than a large sack o' gold!"

"No, it's not even that useful to me. I can recall almost anything I need without aide anyway," I shook my head and crossed my arms. "I'll raise it to a large bag of coppers, but you'll get nothing out of me after that."

"Ha! Surely you jest, milady! But I will lower my price for you, for you are a most beautiful daughter of what must surely be a most honored house filled with angelic protectors!" He paused, and then added quickly, "One large sack of silver with a small bag of gold."

I scratched my chin. "I haven't seen another customer in here in the entire time I've been here. Clearly you aren't doing business well… I think I can make you lower your prices more. But I'll be generous because you are clearly suffering. I'll raise it a small bag of silver and a small bag of coppers."

"You drive a hard bargain, milady, but I see that your little sister is looking interested in some of my wares," He nodded keenly at Order, who was staring blankly back at him. "Two medium bags, one gold and one silver. I'll toss in a light globe, for free."

"Well," I shrugged. "I'll admit that… light globe… would make a decent grenade, if I could weaponized it fully, but it's not really worth it. And… did you just raise your prices?"

"I drive a hard bargain?" The man shrugged.

"We're spending too long here," I muttered. Then I conjured a bag of silvers. "Here's a large bag of silvers, final—"

"Deal!" An oily, soft hand grabbed mine and shook my hand roughly. In the blink of an eye, the bag of silver disappeared in one of his many folds.

But I wasn't done. A pulse of Blue Mana dripped from my forefinger and I touched the tip against his forehead. The merchant stopped moving and stared straight at me, almost as blankly as Order was staring at him.

"You'll get in better shape, and you'll stop being such a grump," I said. Then I tapped my chin for a moment. "Oh! Right, and you'll treat the boy better. Stop hitting him in front of strangers! Don't you even know what common courtesy is? Learn that too. And… hm… you decide that you want to be more religious, so go pray more and stop being so moneygrubbing."

With that, I grabbed my little girl's wrist and we were out of there.

Have any of you ever been to a Tachibana festival? Or how about a Dragon Boat festival? The city of Horizon was something in between the two, if they were culturally Western instead of Eastern. People were crowding the streets in all sorts of lax outfits and not one of them were not eating some sort of snack. Some were holding onto entire roasted legs of lambs while others were eating candied apples.

I took time to walk around the festivities, noticing that not a single angel was in sight, though I did feel Reya fly overhead earlier. "Let's go grab some grub," I said to Order, while pointing at a rather crowded and large establishment with the sign 'The Golden Eagle Tavern' hanging to a side.

Order nodded wordlessly, but I felt her eagerness to experience something new.

Walking in, I noticed Reya was sitting with three rather healthy and hearty looking men, drinking large tankards of what smelled like mead. _Mead_. I felt something within me burn. I turned to the barkeep and grabbed him by the collar before he could react. I had never had to chance to experience mead before I got turned into a Planeswalker, and I had played Skyrim too much not to desire mead. In a low, Christian Bale's Batman-like tone, I growled, "Mead, now!"

"W-What?" The startled tavern worker stuttered. "I-I can't under—"

"MEAD!" I roared, loudly enough over the den of conversations around us.

At the sound of my voice, everyone cheered and raised their mugs. "Mead!"

"I want mead!" I repeated.

The barkeep nodded shakily, "R-right… coming right up. P-please take a seat."

I turned to Order, who sat on a stool beside me in that sort of cute, schoolgirlish way and I said, "Now, Order. You can't tell your moms about this."

"But you are my mother, Mother," Order's brow furrowed slightly.

"Right," I nodded. "Well… erm… look, you're not human and you have clear enough judgment, right? God damn it, I don't even know if letting you get a drink is illegal. I mean, heck, I had mine first drink when I was six, but…" I turned back to my angel.

She looked up blankly, "Mother, I am more mature than you and I have a majority of your memories. If anything, due to the speed of which information is experienced and shared within my sisters' network, _we_ are older than you in our combined age."

I blinked. "Huh. But you…"

She shrugged again, this time a pulse of Blue Mana coursed through her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She looked, she was different. She looked like my, er, that was, she was a twin of Serra's young adult self? "You look like how I would look like if I were looking in a mirror," I stated the obvious.

"Yes. Does this rid you of your doubts, Mother?" Order asked quietly.

"Not if you keep calling me Mother. I don't think this uncomfortableness will ever go away. Just… I don't know, do whatever you like. I'll go eavesdrop on Reya or something," I muttered.

"One mea—," The barkeep paused. He looked at Order and then look at me. Then he looked back at Order, before rubbing his eyes. "There are two of you?" He breathed against his palm and tried to smell it. "I haven't drank on the job and forgotten about it, have I?" He muttered to himself.

"No, just… get my twin another mead, please," I rolled my eyes before flipping a piece of silver towards the barkeep.

Seeing the man nod, I turned my attention towards Reya. She looked tipsy.

"—_You could do something, couldn't you, Lady Reya?_" One of the men beside her asked. He was curiously leaving his mead untouched. He and his friends were all wearing those silver scale-armors that were being mass produced in one or two of the factories around here. Underneath that, he had dark brown leathers on with little, if any, jewelry.

Reya leaned back nodded. "_I can ask Lady Serra about that… but what is the purpose?_"

"_We need more people, milady. To sustain this level of growth, and thereby keep morale and confidence up, we will need more labor._" Another man said. "_It is something we have worked out. We cannot gain much growth in any other ways, even according to the models given to you by… your charge._"

"_Hm…_" Reya muttered softly.

"_Speaking of which,_" the first man muttered. "_Why have we not met this charge? Should not we, the leaders and pillars of the community, meet your charge assigned to you by the Lady Serra?_"

"_No, not now, not until she has finished her work. I have said this before, so do not push me on this,_" Reya replied in an agitated tone. She was flushed with a rosy blush now. "_This is a most delicious drink. More!_"

"_More!_" The others chorused, but they barely touched their mugs.

"_Though, Lady Reya, perhaps you shall put some though on our… request? There is room for growth and our productivity has never been higher, as you have seen from report as your tours._" The second man added hastily.

Reya nodded absentmindedly. "_Uh huh. The Little Lady would probably support that. Why not? I… I shall ask for more from Lady Serra. This is the… tenth time?_"

"_None so much, milady. It is only the eighth time we have requested more people. After all, with new mouths to feed and new arms to work, we shall grow more prosperous and more powerful. It is for a greater good, of course,_" The first man mentioned suavely.

"_Alright. Your reasoning is sound. I have concerns about the working conditions however, we could do something to help the…_" Reya started to say.

But the last man cut her off, "_Please, milady. It is a happy day. We established it especially so that you can celebrate amongst us mortals. It is a mortal holiday, surely such… distasteful matters and thoughts can be held off until the next day? How about a toast? To a profitable future!_"

Reya frowned for a second but it cleared away quickly as she caught the merry atmosphere. "_To… to the future!_" She raised her glass.

"_A profitable future!_" The men did the same. At least this time, they drank heartily and fully.

I blinked. _That was… something._ But before I could think more on it, I noticed a rosy Order looking around the tavern with her eyes burning through her illusion. I sighed and grabbed her.

_Best let her sleep this off_, I rolled onto a bed beside my little angel, on my ship. _I could try resting once in a while too… It's been a tiring day…_


	33. INTERLUDE 4 Creation Chat Log

[18:46:01:00] Imouto 11111 When will She arrive?

[18:46:01:00] * Imouto 11111 pouts in irritation.

[18:46:01:00] Littlest Sister She will once she learns how to join this channel. She is currently experiencing… "technical difficulties".

[18:46:01:00] * Littlest Sister shakes her head despondently and sighs.

[18:46:01:00] Littlest Sister She does not seem to understand how to use the technology we have created.

[18:46:01:00] Imouto 11111 It is expected. One of her memories that were disclosed to our network has shown how the elders lack understanding of newer technology.

[18:46:01:01] Imouto 11111 Perhaps she needs an update in her drivers?

[18:46:01:01] * Imouto 11111 asks hesitantly.

[18:46:01:01] SERENITY PRIME WE DO NOT SUFFER SUCH IMPERFECTIONS.

[18:46:01:02] * SERENITY PRIME adds hastily,

[18:46:01:02] SERENITY PRIME Mother does seem slow at times. But she still processes faster than the other mortals and Serra's Angels.

[18:46:01:02] Littlest Sister She learned how to turn on the program. She should be joining now.

*** GM has joined #MainSpellMechanicsDiscussion.

[18:46:01:02] Littlest Sister Greetings, Great Mother.

[18:46:01:02] * Littlest Sister bows.

[18:46:01:03] * SERENITY PRIME greets the Great Mother with a glass of Oolong.

[18:46:01:04] * Oolong is no longer Away.

[18:46:01:04] Oolong Did someone call me?

[18:46:01:04] Oolong Oh hey, Mother. You have tea. My favorite too!

[18:46:01:04] Imouto 11111 Hello, Great Mother.

[18:46:01:05] * Imouto 11111 bows respectfully towards the creator of creators while totally not kissing up at all.

[18:46:01:06] SERENITY PRIME Don't touch that, it's for Mom. Make one yourself; it barely takes any Mana allotted to you.

[18:46:01:07] * SERENITY PRIME scolds Oolong lightly.

[18:46:01:07] * Oolong slumps and nods.

[18:46:01:08] * Oolong conjures tea.

[18:46:01:10] Oolong Great Mother sure is taking a while to respond. It's been 8 nanoseconds already.

[18:46:01:11] * Oolong sips her tea while wondering what has the Great Mother so occupied.

[18:46:01:15] * Littlest Sister Mother?

[18:46:01:16] * Littlest Sister will check.

[18:46:01:16] * Imouto 11111 will compile data from fellow Imouto units in other channels.

[18:46:01:55] * Littlest Sister returns.

[18:46:01:55] Littlest Sister Mother was being frivolous. She keeps imagining her fingers typing on a 'keyboard', inputting information this way to a computation unit that then—

[18:46:01:56] * Littlest Sister OTL at Mother's slowness.

[18:46:01:56] * Littlest Sister uploads

[18:46:01:56] * SERENITY PRIME pats Littlest's back.

[18:46:01:57] SERENITY PRIME Just show Her how it is done. Mother learns by watching, not through instructions.

[18:46:01:57] * Littlest Sister nods in understanding.

[18:46:01:58] Littlest Sister I understand now! Uploading immediately…

[18:46:02:12] * GM loads BlueSpell_

[18:46:02:12] GM Hi guys.

[18:46:02:14] GM Wow.

[18:46:02:17] GM You guys talk really fast.

[18:46:02:17] Littlest Sister Mother, you should upgrade your hardware.

[18:46:02:18] * Littlest Sister suggests gently.

[18:46:02:19] GM Oh, how did you do that?

[18:46:02:22] GM And I think I'll be fine. This is weird. It feels like I've got lightning in my brainmeats.

[18:46:02:23] * Littlest Sister plants her face in her palm.

[18:46:02:24] * GM blinks.

[18:46:02:28] GM Oh, that's how. Huh. I had to… think it, but not do it, but do it and not think it?

[18:46:02:29] GM Fascinating.

[18:46:02:29] * Imouto 11111 returns.

[18:46:02:29] Imouto 11111 Aaand I return. Oh, Mother is back. Good.

[18:46:02:29] * Imouto 11111 pings GM.

[18:46:02:29] * Imouto 11111 has a list of requests from other Imouto units.

[18:46:02:34] GM Other Imouto units?

[18:46:02:34] Imouto 11111 Imouto units are we, the combination of Blue Mana and White Mana and Wild Mana—the 'Diamond Faeries' as You have named us. We use this term because you seem to think fondly of it.

[18:46:02:38] GM Oh, that's cool. Cool, cool, cool.

[18:46:02:43] GM So what are your inquiries?

[18:46:02:43] Imouto 11111 Why are you replying so slowly?

[18:46:02:43] * Imouto 11111 asks as politely as possible while somewhat annoyed.

[18:46:02:44] * Imouto 11111 wonders if there is an interplanar communications lag?

[18:46:02:44] * Imouto 11111 checks through applying one hundred Blue Mana programmed spells through nano-fissures in the Aether.

[18:46:02:44] * Imouto 11111 scratches the back of her head in puzzlement.

[18:46:02:45] Imouto 11111 The relative closeness of our planes should not induce any lag…

[18:46:02:45] Littlest Sister I believe Mother is mixing too many thoughts.

[18:46:02:46] Littlest Sister Mother, have you tried not repressing your thoughts?

[18:46:02:52] GM I'll try that.

[18:46:02:52] * GM uploads

[18:46:02:52] GM WALLA WALLA WASHINGTON.

[18:46:02:52] * GM uploads , , ,

[18:46:02:52] GM _I see a little silhouetto of a man,_

[18:46:02:52] GM _Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the fandango?_

[18:46:02:52] GM _Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening!_

[18:46:02:52] GM _Gallileo, Gallileo,_

[18:46:02:52] GM _Gallileo, Gallileo,_

[18:46:02:52] GM _Gallileo Figaro – magnifico!_

[18:46:02:52] * GM uploads Universal Reset

[18:46:02:52] * GM uploads Cats in

[18:46:02:52] * GM uploads CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies , CatsandBoobies

[18:46:02:52] GM Ia! Ia! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

*** GM quit (Timeout).

*** GM has joined #MainSpellMechanicsDiscussion.

[18:46:02:59] * Imouto 11111 is unsure what she has just witnessed.

[18:46:02:61] Littlest Sister Do not think about it. There lies only madness.

[18:46:02:62] * Littlest Sister warns sternly.

[18:46:02:63] GM Okay, I think it's probably best I keep a lid on what I send you guys.

[18:46:02:67] GM So what's this about inquiries?

[18:46:02:67] Imouto 11111 Great Mother, we cannot abide by the currently used cataloging system for spells. The idea of 'turns' and their actual length in a non-card game format is ridiculously difficult to pinpoint, even when applying the theory that 'turns' are different with each set.

[18:46:02:75] GM Okay. What do you suggest then?

[18:46:02:76] Imouto 11111 I suggest discarding labels such as: enchantment, instant, and sorcery. It would be easier to impose a duration count and a casting count instead.

[18:46:02:89] GM That would make sense.

[18:46:02:91] GM Hm…

[18:46:03:02] GM What sorts of timers should we label them with? Because I know you guys will want to use the smallest units possible. I don't think I can cast a spell mentally in a nanosecond.

[18:46:03:02] * Littlest Sister frowns in puzzlement.

[18:46:03:02] Littlest Sister But you can.

[18:46:03:05] GM Uh. I'm pretty sure I can't.

[18:46:03:06] * Littlest Sister replies with a patient slowness,

[18:46:03:06] Littlest Sister Mother, do you remember that mental note you made about how Planeswalker entities of your species limit themselves mentally with their own preconceived beliefs?

[18:46:03:09] GM Yeah, but this isn't like that…

[18:46:03:10] Littlest Sister You believe that the creature Nicol Bolas' own hubris is what causes it to require Mana Lines to anchor itself rather than any limit on actual power. How is this any different?

[18:46:03:10] * Littlest Sister argues fervently.

[18:46:03:11] GM Look, you're comparing apples and oranges here.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister I am not, Mother!

[18:46:03:11] * Littlest Sister snaps agitatedly.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister You don't even try!

[18:46:03:11] GM The hell I don't.

[18:46:03:11] GM This isn't some kind of kids' show where power-ups are handed out like candy. I've been trying all of Urza's tricks to quicken my thinking! Don't you think I'm already doing everything I can?

[18:46:03:11] * GM harrumphs in anger.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister I understand that spells are still scientific and are formulas that require the equations that end up as vocal commands or as gestures, but they can be bypassed.

[18:46:03:11] GM With huge outputs of power!

[18:46:03:11] GM And it gets exponentially higher! The difference between an instantly cast Lightning Bolt and one that is also _near_ instant—but uses a single flick of a hand—is enormous!

[18:46:03:11] GM You know this, you were there when we started testing them.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister Yet the difference is still negligible to you, Mother.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister You were not even tired after an hour of use.

[18:46:03:11] * Littlest Sister points out logically.

[18:46:03:11] GM But you were! And not to mention your sisters. If it's only usable by me, then what's the point?

[18:46:03:11] * GM sighs tiredly.

[18:46:03:11] * Littlest Sister is admonished.

[18:46:03:11] GM No, no. I should have said something…

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister You can make it up by lowering your cast time to less than one second, instead of requiring upwards 20 seconds to cast individual spells.

[18:46:03:11] GM That's not fair! Those spells were sorceries—

[18:46:03:11] GM Oh.

[18:46:03:11] GM Huh.

[18:46:03:11] GM Maybe I was limiting myself a little.

[18:46:03:11] GM But you can't lower the counters to something like nanoseconds. That's just… I don't know, asking for the impossible, or something.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister We realize that. Our collective understands that the collection of power is not instant and its utilization requires time, even when already within our… 'Mana Pool'.

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister We suggest using units that are equal to quarters of seconds as a best way for measurement of duration. You had cast the default Lightning Bolt and default Counterspell at such speeds of three-fourths of one second before when in 'the heat of battle'.

[18:46:03:11] * GM is confused.

[18:46:03:11] GM Default?

[18:46:03:11] Littlest Sister That is the next topic that Imouto 11111 will bring up. We should conclude the current line of discussion first.

[18:46:03:11] GM Hm. Right. Alright. I'll approve those two parts. Ban the 'enchantment/instant/sorcery' labels and use duration timers instead.

[18:46:03:12] Littlest Sister You see, Mother? You have even been able to break your own limits by communicating so quickly. Please turn your attention to the timestamp.

[18:46:03:13] GM … Huh.

[18:46:03:14] GM You sneaky, little brat. I ought to give you a noogie for this…

[18:46:03:14] * GM sighs.

[18:46:03:15] GM Alright, you made your point. I don't like that you provoked me into it, but you made your point.

[18:46:03:15] * GM accepts it.

[18:46:03:15] GM … Once more, I become less human. Hit me with the next one.

[18:46:03:17] Imouto 11111 Great Mother, we suggest a change of the amount of Mana usage counted by a 'number'.

[18:46:03:18] Imouto 11111 There is no change in the effects other than magnitude, speed, or additional effects when used.

[18:46:03:19] Imouto 11111 Another problem with the current system is that a default, or 'One Mana', Counterspell can turn a default Lightning Bolt, but it cannot turn away a Lightning bolt that uses more than an estimate of a little less than two units of Red Mana.

[18:46:03:20] GM Actually, I thought about this problem already.

[18:46:03:21] GM I haven't really thought up any ways of changing the current system though; it still works. It just makes countering spells and measuring a spell's potential power to be rather inefficient.

[18:46:03:21] GM There's not much to fix here…

[18:46:03:22] * GM scratches her head in puzzlement.

[18:46:03:23] Imouto 11111 The amount is different though. Another problem is that the potential Mana you would gain from future claimed lands… they would be different.

[18:46:03:23] Imouto 11111 According to Urza's notes

[18:46:03:23] * GM interrupts.

[18:46:03:23] GM Yes, I know what Urza's notes say.

[18:46:03:24] GM I didn't think of that problem though.

[18:46:03:25] GM Yeah… since the boundaries of land is simply a limitation of thought and imposed by the souls… or a mental imposition…

[18:46:03:25] GM Well, hell. I thought I would just measure what the output of each would be. It's not like there's any other ways of doing it, is there?

[18:46:03:26] Imouto 11111 We suggest a usage of mathematical tools to instead measure the amount of Mana used to be between 0 and 10 levels, where 0 is the smallest unit that no Mana can be used or needed and 10 requires the Mana of a universe.

[18:46:03:26] Imouto 11111 Level 10 would represent the nigh-incalculable, of course, such as a spell that would require the entirety of Mother's Moon.

[18:46:03:26] GM Okay…

[18:46:03:27] GM What about a spell that affects an entire world, like… say Earth, my home planet. Not a plane, mind you. You can see it, right?

[18:46:03:26] Imouto 11111 That would be Level 5.

[18:46:03:27] GM Can't I just call that '5 Mana' then?

[18:46:03:28] Imouto 11111 Would that not cause confusion, if compared to your card game, Great Mother? That was taken into consideration when we named this after all.

[18:46:03:28] * Imouto 11111 admits with a warm feeling of pride in her heart.

[18:46:03:29] GM Aw.

[18:46:03:29] GM Heck.

[18:46:03:29] GM No, it's fine to me.

[18:46:03:31] GM So… on this scale, I'll probably never use anything that is a 10 Mana spell, right?

[18:46:03:32] GM Show me its applications.

[18:46:03:35] * Imouto 11111 uploads

[18:46:03:35] * GM loads

[18:46:03:36] GM Uh huh…

[18:46:03:36] * GM nods slowly.

[18:46:03:39] GM Uh huh…

[18:46:03:39] * GM nods slowly.

[18:46:03:41] * GM recoils.

[18:46:03:41] GM Oh, Robot Jesus on a Raptor! That Lightning Bolt just made a Grand Canyon! H-How much Mana was it exactly…? Actually, was this real?

[18:46:03:41] * Imouto 11111 shakes her head.

[18:46:03:41] Imouto 11111 It is simulated to the closest accuracy.

[18:46:03:42] Imouto 11111 That Lightning Bolt of that magnitude _should_ be at approximately Level 2.718 according to this new scale.

[18:46:03:43] * GM nods in understanding and smiles.

[18:46:03:43] GM Well. At least this is all measurable then. I'll try to put this into practice.

[18:46:03:49] GM Is there anything else you need to ask me?

[18:46:03:49] GM And do you have an update on the spell experiments?

[18:46:03:49] * Imouto 11111 shakes her head slowly.

[18:46:03:50] Imouto 11111 We currently have no questions…

[18:46:03:50] Imouto 11111 … We do have an update, however.

[18:46:03:52] GM Oh? Hit me with it.

[18:46:03:53] Imouto 11111 We have had little 'luck' on approximating the exact sciences and methods behind the individual spells you have explained to us through the use of the card game and we do not understand how 'summoned creature spells' work yet as we have had no examples for this, since creation is proven to be different from summoning.

[18:46:03:55] Imouto 11111 However, we have been able to find a means of defining and formulizing into Mana usage of several effects. We hope that we are being efficient, as we have tried to be, but we are unsure until we have seen the actual usage of spells we wish to replicate.

[18:46:03:56] GM What kinds of effects have we got so far?

[18:46:03:57] * GM asks with interest oozing off of her as delicious multicolored Mana.

[18:46:03:58] * Imouto 11111 lists off proudly,

[18:46:03:58] Imouto 11111 From the usage of White Mana, we have been able to map the effects: 'Heal', 'Create', 'Banish', 'Ward', 'Life', and 'Fortify' in their applicable manners. Therefore, 'fortifying' the aspect of 'flight' can cause a being without means to fly without any non-magical explanation.

[18:46:03:59] * GM nods impatiently.

[18:46:03:60] GM Right, just tell me what the major effects are. Playing with them will be pretty interesting. I'll probably be right in that, if I applied, say, 5 Mana in the 'Fortify' of 'Invulnerability' of a single person, it'd be the same as the card 'Indestructibility'? Indefinite duration?

[18:46:03:61] Imouto 11111 Understood, correct, and yes.

[18:46:03:61] * Imouto 11111 nods, but is somewhat sad to be unable to show completely the extent of how far the experiments have come.

[18:46:03:63] Imouto 11111 Under the Blue and the Red, we have: 'Dispel', 'Reflect', 'Reveal', 'Transform', 'Transport', 'Foresee', 'Delude' , 'Compel', 'Destroy', 'Energy', and 'Conjure'. We have cataloged the effects on some major elements that you have left untouched such as 'Gravity', 'Space', and 'Time'. We have an information packet that explains in detail. We believe this system of cataloging is better than the ones established by Urza or Serra's information, as it is more complete.

[18:46:03:63] GM Let's see it.

[18:46:03:71] * Imouto 11111 uploads Experiment Logs Part

[18:46:03:72] * GM begins processing information.

[18:46:19:11] GM Holy crap.

[18:46:19:60] GM I'm… I think I'm going to need a few days to finish all of these, even at the speed I'm thinking right now.

[18:46:19:61] * GM feels tired and excited at the same time.

[18:46:19:61] * SERENITY PRIME sighs, only tiredly.

[18:46:19:62] SERENITY PRIME If you wish to see an application of the spell, well… I believe one of Liberty's Dragon Daughters have completed the replication of the 'Shattering Spree' spell, Mother.

[18:46:19:62] GM Why do you sound upset about this?

[18:46:19:62] SERENITY PRIME Well, Mother.

[18:46:19:63] SERENITY PRIME They saw fit to experiment on my flying fortress.

[18:46:19:63] SERENITY PRIME It might be indestructible, but only to a degree.

[18:46:19:63] SERENITY PRIME With enough power, anything can break.

[18:46:19:64] GM … How big was the explosion?

[18:46:19:64] SERENITY PRIME There is a crater large enough to cover approximately one-fifths of the entire moon.

[18:46:19:65] * GM cringes.

[18:46:19:65] GM I'm going to have to fix that myself, aren't I?

[18:46:19:66] SERENITY PRIME Yes.

[18:46:19:68] * GM looks on the bright side…

[19:04:12:93] GM … At least it wasn't me this time…


	34. a girl takes responsibility

My eyes swept over the destruction. This was a part of my creation, my kingdom. Hmph. Some kingdom this was. Everything was ruin. There was little to start with, but after Serra's help the surface was covered in golden prairies. Where once green pastures were my domain, I feasted my eyes upon only blackened ashes and cracked earth.

The single explosion had told me so much about the limits of indestructibility, but it was something I knew. All things broke, nothing was forever…

Sand blew in my eyes. I squinted.

Ashes flew as thick as curtains, buffeting my face like waves of crumbling water. A layer lingered, and I spat what speck that few in my mouth to no avail. More flew in with each second.

White, bright power pulsed around me heatedly.

It was my halo of power, the White Mana poured out of my being, creating a shell. It was a translucent bubble that was another decree of indestructibility and spacious enough to allow me enough room to swing my arms about. On the scale that my creations had figured out, it would be no more than a 'spell of warding against destruction and physical of the fourth magnitude of White Mana'. I scoffed at the thought; it was wordy and conveyed too much.

Surveying all that I saw, my frown deepened still.

The atmosphere was more ash and flying chunks of black earth than air. I could not see anything through my barrier other than the darkness that loomed over my land. It irritated me. With a growl, my body vibrated with waves of Mana, brighter and brighter still.

My light shone through the darkness, destroying all that was not. I saw and saw more as my light expanded like beams piercing through a silken veil. Five meters, fifty, one hundred… Power pulsed from me greater and greater, until I rivaled the luminescence of Serra herself.

I stopped for a single second, thinking I could move on to the next area—

It was a mistake. The moment my light retreated into me, the darkness returned. It was slow, rolling in like a sea of slugs crawling over each other. My cheek twitched—it was mental reaction, not a physical one however.

"_Have you done this before, Mother?_" Order had asked quietly at the back of my mind.

My first response was to say yes. I would have told her that lie, because I was irritated by my lack of progress and her asking me like that. I was annoyed because I felt ashamed, though I would blame her by saying she was looking over my shoulder.

That was… an older me. A past me. A younger me. It was a me that was more human, but I was no longer thus. I wasn't one in a long time…

I felt my lips curl downward at a steady pace. The frown darkened as I brooded over my predicament. That aspect of me—that instant reaction—was too human. No, it wasn't even that. It was just too _stupid_. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "No, I haven't done this before," I replied.

"_The collective believes that reparations require more variables than creation or destruction spells_," Order said helpfully. "_A request for blanket all-repairing spells has been sent, but we are preoccupied with processing the inconsistent properties of Mana at this moment._"

I nodded, "That's fine. I'll figure this out myself."

Because I was wrong to be so defensive. I had no reason to be, not with my daughters. What kind of example was I setting by lying to them? I would not do that anymore, I promised. Yes, this was no time to be occupied with such insecurities. _Silly, even._

My orb of white light blinked as I commanded it to rise. Higher, higher, higher. I rose and rose until I was in the shadow of my world, with the doorway to Serra's Realm in the horizon. It was a beautiful sight, but I spared it no mind. I was no longer going to allow my indulgences get in the way of my work.

… And I had too much work for anything else.

Again, I surveyed my kingdom and the massive crater within. My crackled lips parted, "This is mine. All of it. No one else's. No one else's to destroy and no one else's to heal. Heal. Heal! _Heal!_"

My vision—my focus and my mind included—divided into one billion parts, each watching a single piece of the damage. Not enough… Again, I divided each part into a billion pieces, high and low. Again and again, until each miniscule piece of dust was in my vision. This was my kingdom. There was nothing I could not survey, here in my kingdom.

In truth, this spell was derived from the lenses that Serra keeps in her tower. But Serra, who created such a magnificent artifact, did not have a million minds calculating and studying at speeds approaching singularity. I did, and I had the capability to see and see.

I reached out with one hand and I grasped reality. Blue Mana pulsed around me like liquid fire without a direction to flow. It exploded outwards, towards every direction possible in all the dimensions I have allowed for my creation. There was a single word for what this was, a single piece of knowledge so difficult to comprehend for outsiders that only those who have achieved it knew what it was like to see all, to be all.

_Omniscience._

Each particle of dust was within my view. But then, I was each particle. I had… what did I do? I divided myself so many times… I tugged on it, this small, local area of _everything_. I left nothing behind.

To be honest, this was less costly on my reserves of Mana than my earlier attempts to destroy each particle by bullheadedly throwing power at it. I had not even expended half of the power I had to create a thousand rays of the sun earlier. Instead, it felt like a million times the mental power was spent to even comprehend what I was trying to do. Deep, deep within me, a small, still child-like part of my soul emitted a soft giggle.

As I pulled, all the particles flew. They flew and flew towards me convulsing and compressing until they were but a moon for a moon. But then I kept pulling, for there was no turning back now. Matter was nothing to the power of Mana within me.

I pulled and pulled, without mercy for physics and the laws that should have governed my world. I grasped my everything and reformed what I was. Then, when I was whole again, I stared down at my palms with that same frown. "What have I become?" I muttered.

"_We do not understand, Mother._" Order spoke up, confused.

"No, it's… it's nothing," I muttered. My work was still unfinished. I had a mission. My focus turned towards the remains of the crater before my eyes. Idly, I wondered what my mass was now. If I included all the power that I gathered at a constant rate into what I could call my 'Mana Pool', and all the uncountable particles of dust now a part of me… I didn't know. It would be one more thing to make a note of, for the future. "Clear the surrounding area," I commanded.

"_Standing by._" Order replied after a second, "_No one is within range._"

Again, I commanded. But this time, I did not command my daughters, though I still commanded my creations. Power—_pure, utterly destructive power_—sizzled the air around me, burning and ionizing what was still left around me if not a vacuum. My voice reverberated through all of my kingdom, "**Let the world Burn**."

From under the crust of my world, lava erupted as the entirety of the crater cracked from the pressure underneath. So massive was the heat that the entire circle glowed with an eerie, orange light, cracking with the sound of the ground crying in pain. But it was a cry I ignored. My focus and my mission was elsewhere. My eyes were on each piece of the earth that melted and each glob of magma that cooled. With only pulses of wild Aether, I directed their movements against what should logically be.

"**Flow according to my Will**," I directed again, and it was so. "**Let there be Water. Let there be Life. Now Grow and Heal. Let the order of things be restored**." From crackled, dead wastelands of a desert, the world changed in instants. For one second, it was a blackened, yet fertile land of hills and plains and then in the next moment it was a wetland. Trees sprouted from nothingness but my own memories. Grass and flowers and everything in between—a whole system of life—sprouted out of nothingness but cracks between blackness.

This was my kingdom, and it was my paradise. It was mine, mine, and utterly mine. I would let it not come to harm ever again. I looked down once again at my palms. There was so much power there. It was my power to learn and control. When I turned back to the land, I realized what I wanted and what I was running from all this time.

_My power shall grow, and with it, I will seize everything that is mine. I will protected everything, because everything is mine. I have to gain more, more power. And I will never squander it again…_


	35. INTERLUDE 5 Just Another Girl

Talia didn't know her parents well. What she did know, she mostly learned from the others in her village.

Her mother died to give birth to her. It was a long time ago, and she never knew what it was like, to be in the embrace of a mother. She didn't know that warmth. In not knowing what she was missing out on, she didn't crave it like those many others of her age.

Her father died shortly after, though in what way, she did not know for a long time.

Demons were rare in this world, they were like myths and legends. Seeing one was like seeing an evil unicorn. Though, they were still beings of power and people still worshipped them, like they worshipped angels and gods, and other names that were whispered in the winds.

The village she grew up in was a small, scattered place with only a hundred households, if she included the farmlands around the town. It was a small, quiet place that people moved out of rather than into. But it was home, for a time.

Without parents, Talia was not like the other children.

Many worked during the day, even at a young age. After all, the village still needed to pay taxes, whatever those were. And after all, the children needed to start young to learn the professions of their parents. Some were bakers who needed their children to run errands. Others were craftsmen, brewers, or farmhands. There were many jobs to fill and very little for those who did not work.

In retrospect, it was easy to see why the other children teased her. But at the time, she wondered if there was something wrong with her. What caused her to kill her mother at birth? What caused her to drive her father to his death? These were the sorts of questions she asked herself, though she received no replies from the dark nights she laid alone and shivering.

But the village provided for her and kept her alive. For that, she was grateful. There was a small cottage next to the mayor's residence, which was cleared out for those without parents. Some adults would pity her, and she found herself with an amalgamation of different goods.

On some nights, she had scraps of bread, on others she had meat. The thought of juicy flesh in her mouth, being torn apart by her teeth, oft brought drool to her lips. Sometimes—some rare, special occasions that happened perhaps once a year—she even enjoyed foreign, strange foods. There was once upon a time when the mayor had given her his leftovers from a meeting with a traveling merchant. 'Potato' was what the food was called. The merchant had instructed the mayor's wife to slice it and broil it oil. It was delicious.

But many nights, while watching the other families gather around their tables, she was the one outside and alone. She had no one to share a table with, who would want an orphan like her with nothing to bring? Instead, she watched enviously from outside the warm lights, sitting in the shadows.

The forest that surrounded the village was plentiful. She had all the berries and mushrooms she could eat, sometimes. But sometimes she picked the wrong fruits. Sometimes, a colorful mushroom turned out to cause her to throw up.

No one taught her what not to do, and it was those times that hurt the most. Because it was when she made a mistake that no one else would that she found herself laughed at by those other children.

But she lived, even if she didn't thrive.

There were few demons but this did not mean the world was safe for a single child to wander about. Other creatures preyed on humans, because even with civilization and magic, humans were not the most powerful. They were not even unique. The distant volcano rumbled from time to time, ruled by feuding drakes of the air and their legions of goblins. They always seemed so far away, like tiny specks in the skies.

And if not for the tales of traveling merchants, she would have never known about the things outside of her small, small world. She dreamed of following one of those caravans one day and seeing elves and faeries, goblins and dragons with her own eyes.

But she had nothing to offer than but another mouth to feed.

When the aged town healer asked for Talia one day, when she had just started to blossom into womanhood, she was very puzzled. Nevertheless, she answered the call and found herself traveling with one of the healer's many apprentices and two others, into the forests and up the mountains. There were ingredients and herbs they were looking for, they had told her.

They told her many things. They joked and japed at each other as if they had known each other for a long time. And once again, Talia felt envy burn within her heart. She wanted that companionship. It was tantalizing to see so close to her yet still out of her grasp.

The first trip into the forest was short and to the point. So was the second and the third. Soon, Talia found herself willing and even happy to go on these dangerous trips, even though the large monstrosities within the forest yearned for human flesh. Giant spiders, giant slugs, giant snakes, dire bears, dire wolves, and everything else she knew of hid within the shadows of the leaves. Yet the warmth of human companionship called to her.

And they told her things and treated her like one of them.

Then another day came, and others asked for her help. They wanted to go deeper into the forest and into the mountains, where the goblins scurried about. There was more than herbs there, they said. They wanted the treasures, to bring riches to the village, they had said.

They had said of what they knew, of the locations and numbers. They had said many things. All these things they said convinced her enough, it seemed, but she really didn't need convincing. She wanted to go, by then, if not to see the world outside the village, then for the companionship and camaraderie that the trips offered.

They had said many things, and they lied. These young men were different from the last. They were not cultist or purely evil for evil's sake, but they were selfish and let their desires run rampant.

When she looked up at them with questioning eyes, their leader replied simply, "You don't have a family. You don't have any friends. Who cares what we do to you? Besides, you should be happy for our attention."

Like a hurt puppy who didn't know why it was kicked, she stared up at them with unshed tears. They used her then, at the foot of the mountain. They did things. And they tainted and wounded her, changing her so that she would never be the same again. She would never seek companionship like before. She would fear the faces she didn't know. Though she was naïve, she knew enough that a piece of her died that day and that night.

But the gods, wherever they were, seemed to have other plans for her.

Goblins had poured out of their holes and tunnels sometimes during the dusk. Her cries as she was broken had alerted the beasts of their presence. And they came in droves…

The leader was the first to be speared. He was run through by a large goblin, twice the size of man and wielding a smaller goblin as a lance. The next two were killed in explosions and fires. The only ones who remained and escaped were her and the last of her captors who violated her so. In some moments, she wanted to stop running and trip the man, damning both of them to death. In other moments, she just wished the whole day did not happen.

But the goblins were many and the green tide swallowed them whole. The goblins, it seemed, had a sense of humor. They were to fight each other, and the winner got to leave. The loser? The loser would be dinner.

And so she killed another piece of her heart then, too crazed and frightened to think straight. After being so pained in a life of lonely sadness, she found her first chance to lash out.

The other man was a man-at-arms. He trained with the boys and men, and knew how to wield a mace. It was a large, heavy thing, longer than her thigh and its end thicker too. When the strikes missed her, they would crush wood, crumble stone, and flatten earth. A single hit meant death. She wanted to lash out, but the other was greater and more skilled.

Yet, for some reason, he did not want to kill her just yet. He wanted to humiliate her. So he pinned her to ground with his weapon and undone his armor.

Her mind flashed back to the past night and day and she relive the pain. She hated it and wanted nothing to do with it. She wanted it gone…

Something welled up inside her then, something that represented the grave sight of her tormentors. It was a patch of the mountainside that grew within her heart, and it was a Mana of the magi. The healers used it, and so did the fabled wizards. She was neither though, and yet she had it. It might have puzzled her had she been thinking straight. Instead, she just lashed out, eyes filled with inanity.

Lightning crackled around her skin, searing the flesh off of the man who would use her again. The shock had frightened the goblins too, those silly, dumb creatures.

Seeing the opportunity, she ran.

She didn't know how far she ran, but she knew she couldn't return to her home. She had the blood of their sons on her hands, and who in the village actually cared for her? A part of her had died that day, a piece of her broken by the pain. Perhaps the leader was right. Who would care if she suffered? Certainly, there were no gods for her to beseech, and no mortals for her to lean upon.

All she had was herself. So she ran into the forest and away. She walked and walked and learned how to survive. All the while, the darkness guided her from the corner of her vision.

Eventually, she arrived at a small, white building. It was small, perhaps compared to the towering trees of her forest. It was small compared to a mountain. But soon, it was a towering structure of spirit that she looked up to.

Talia was a shivering wreck, wearing only dirty, aged rags that stuck to her like goo of the oozes in the forests. Talia had lived in the wilderness for a year. Or was it two? Perhaps it was ten? She didn't know to be honest, only that in her wanderings she found herself running from her pain. She didn't want it and didn't share it. It tormented in from within and clawed out of her, changing her into a haggard, young woman who didn't look so young at all.

When she knocked on the door, she was too hungry and too tired to do anything else. The creatures of the forest chased her, knowing that she didn't belong. They may have also chased her simply because she was weak and they were strong. Whatever the case, it was already her last resort.

An old woman answered the door. She worn conservative clothing that covered all parts of her with excess layers of cloth, showing only her face. "Yes? Come in, come in."

It was then that this little girl who had grown into a woman learned of the word of Serra. The building was an abbey dedicated to that goddess she knew little about, but she learned and learned. It taught her to be kind and it give her companionship. For that, she liked the words. But for just a moment, she had forgotten about her life in these words. In that moment, she had grown to love the goddess Serra. When the moment came, years later, that Serra needed her? She went without issue.

And so here she was.

"What is this?" She asked, looking down at her palms. They were some sort of coppery coins.

"That's what I'm paying you," The portly man before her said with a wave. "You know, it's money. You use it to go buy food or whatever you like. Sure, it's a couple of pennies, but I'm sure you know how to make the most of it."

"I came to serve the goddess Serra, not for payment," She replied.

"There no need to be like that. All workers need a little motivation," The man grumbled. "Look, they can't say I'm keeping you as a serf or something if I'm paying you. Beside, you are helping the goddess Serra!"

"I… I don't understand…" She muttered more to herself than to her new supervisor. "Serra's teaching had said not a word of this sort of behavior. This is not in line with what she teaches…."

"You gotta feed yourself somehow," the fat man shrugged, before turning back to his ledgers and books and piles of coins. "And I gotta feed myself. Go on and scram already, I have work to do."

"…. I see," Talia nodded slowly. She looked down at the copper coins again. "I will try to abide this. Where do I go now?" Everything had been too new, and even weeks later, Talia was still confused with far too many things. But there were too many others that kept her awed. The endless sky, the towering spires, and all these new creations…

"Just go eat with the others, either at the tavern or some other eatery. Just look for those useless bunch who keep whining about the proletariat being kept down by us hardworking capitalist folk," The factory supervisor grumbled.

"Thank you for your time," Talia nodded.

Though many things had changed and not for the better, she could get used to this place. Here, she was not judged for who or what she was. Here she was free… She felt she was in love with Serra's Realm. It was too glorious for her to turn her eyes away from it. As she walked out of the man's office, she began to whistle a happy tone she learned not long after arriving, in the tune of the jingle of the coins in her pocket.

_The future is looking brighter and brighter_, she allowed herself a smile.


	36. a stupid girl goes insane

I once read an article on the topic of Quantum Mechanics. At the time, I was an ordinary, average human being, if such a thing existed. I thought I was probably below the average then, looking back even as I was now. I didn't understand the article well enough to comprehend it even with the other sources of information at my disposal. I did then turn to encyclopedias and Wikipedia, sources that should have been general enough to explain the concept to me rather easily. But at the time, my heart wasn't in it and I gave up soon after.

Whatever disparaging things I could think of myself, I could not do the same for my creations. Within days of learning of my memories of my world's understanding of the fundamental rules of my universe, they have created a library of knowledge. Motivation and progress were ever present. After all, there was no reason why they shouldn't be so excited for new things, being as young as they were and with their creator watching over them. I had given up on trying to figure out how God played dice with the universe even before I was a being of energy but that lack of resolve stayed with me even afterwards.

Time… what was the concept of time to beings who molded reality? Even without the understanding of the natural world, wizards could bend it, swim through it and stop it with a few wiggly fingers, a string of muttered words and a stream of energy. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that my children soon learned how to mess with time and space with as little effort as possible. I may have tried to slow progress on that front, thinking that the magic dealing with time had caused… something. I knew of a being that would be born much, much later called Karona, but I had never known how that situation was resolved.

A dilemma for me, perhaps… but time, time was everything. Yet time passed as my rules decreed. A hundred days came and went, and we found ourselves thinking that we understood the universe more than ever. Such was the folly of arrogance.

My children divided themselves into two sides.

One decided that knowledge was everything. Information was their king; it was power and it was their ultimate goal. They had made the pursuit of knowledge their mission, thinking nothing else mattered. In a way, they were correct. But that was only so from a… certain point of view. With the knowledge they have mined, I learned how to peer into the past and the future, and swim the currents of time, with no more power than what is needed to create a pool of water.

Yet some rules could not be circumvented. The power required to create from nothingness remained the same. Fireballs and Lightning, all the same had a minimum requirement. They had turned me into a perpetual energy machine, yet without the power to start the first spark in this grand design, it was all worthless. That was where the other side came in. For them, knowledge was useful, but only power was power. Rather than trying to learn how to bend universes with mathematics, they turned inward and tried to hone their power. It was on their urging that we created a Mox.

I could remember it even to this day. The power I pulled on shook my world and nearly destroyed me. Such power should not be able to be contained. Did you remember how everything—even the molecules around me—exploded when I first created Serenity?

Now multiply it by infinity, and take it to the depth of forever, and you still have barely a glimpse of what I am talking about.

I had shattered my world. No, I had done more than that—for that single moment of eternity, nothing in my plane existed outside of me. It was utter silence, and I think…

I think…

… _I think myself insane._

The loneliness of forever compounded by everything was still infinity, before it is divided by zero. But it worked. It shouldn't have worked in my mind. I didn't want it to work. It broke _everything_. But it did… from a certain point of view. This Mox was a joke that mocked the multiverse. It shouldn't have existence… _this Mox Lotus_. But it was. It was and it was. Then it was… me. And now what was I? What sort of monster had I made myself into? Regret only comes after the act. But if time were just as easy to traverse as the lawn of your yard, then why does such lament consume me? My mind breaks and heals, staying in a state of being both insane and sane. The concept of 'then' and 'now' were intermingled inside of me, a state of situation that I would only attribute to Weeping Angels. What was I _then_?

What am I _now_?

I had thought myself beneath Serra and Urza. In a way, I was right, but in others I was wrong.

On the bottom of the totem pole were regular wizards who have discovered the means to tap into lands. These boundaries were imaginary and illusionary, but they existed in the minds and thus the souls of those who bound themselves to the land. I knew this not from my knowledge before, but from what I deduced in the many tomes and texts I studied.

But then there were the 'new' Planeswalkers. This, I postulated, was where they stood above, in their ability to intuitively walk through the Aether and _survive_. Take my Spark, divide this infinity by infinity, and you would still have infinity, though so diminished it is that it should be a definable number. This sort of spark within the 'new' Planeswalkers elevated them above wizards, but they were below gods, concepts, and such universal forces they could not harness.

Yet above all those things were beings like Urza and Serra. They were the 'old' Planeswalkers, weren't they? They could not die and they were forever, forcing the world around them and reality at large to shape to their whims. I thought myself one of them.

But in the little card game, 'Magic the Gathering' there was a tier above them, wasn't there? That meta-state that shouldn't be was the concept of 'Players'. They do not exist, not truly, in this world or my own in the sense that was given by what was speculated. But that was the only thing I could see myself being. And I found myself hating it.

This was not a game anymore. I cared and cared too much.

What happens at the end of a game? Perhaps we go home, perhaps we dine, or perhaps we begin anew. Something like that was _normal_. That was the power of a 'Player', because in the end it was just a game. Did others like me exist? I didn't know and I didn't want to know.

The more insane part of me laughs at this and calls me stupid for angst. It laughs because it knows that while God does not play dice, we play with—

The moment of infinite passes as quickly as it came and I descend into the core of my universe, as all is restored the way they should be. Anymore ideas for bringing infinite energy—all at once—into being from the Aether are scrapped. I commanded it so, and for now, they would obey me. Else they would not survive, one way or the other. This was the height of recklessness, on par with attempting to create a gravitational singularity on Earth, but more so, for it would, and should, have been the end of all things.

We were a reckless bunch, and I loved them so. But I turned and looked again, and I realized it was not a lovable recklessness at all. The height of folly, as it were, was our blind arrogance. We were so, so arrogant in our belief that we were the masters of all that we surveyed.

No longer. No more. They would become grounded and only I would remain.

Wizards talk and boast of their ocean of power within their grasp, wielding them like blunt clubs against one and another in their conflicts for dominance. What a bunch of silly children. My toes touched the edge of infinity and all of my plane twisted to my will. Such a thing was easier said than done, but done easier than what even Serra tried to accomplish. For my dominion is still yet limited, so unlike hers.

My children lacked emotion? They could not understand my feelings? They were made to be only tools of war with little other function?

_Fine._ Let them be _more._

I reshaped them, all of them, at once. Some might still be faeries of pure diamond. Some were energy beings in the shape of dragons. Others were archangels of great might. But no more. They shall be _more_, and they shall be _less_.

They felt pain as they died and they were all destined to expire. Lust, wrath, greed, sloth, pride, envy, and gluttony visited them as surely as chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, humility, patience, and kindness. They would exist and be as all mortals be, and they would spread through the world and prosper, just as humanity did on so many Earths.

But my thoughts and morals remained inside them, keeping watch over their actions, as much as those that influenced me as well. After all, it would not be good of me to have given them the means to be mortal, without any of the wisdom learned through the ages.

_Pursue knowledge_, whispers Urza's ever present brilliance.

_Be good to each other_, teaches Serra's all-consuming light…

… _Obey_, commands the creator's voice, with my eyes of burning coal. _She sees your actions and stares into your soul_.


	37. a girl goes off the deep end and NEETs

_Say that your first memory was that of your surprised and happy mother's face. She looks down at you and everything feels warm. It is a feeling you don't really understand, but you can later relate it to being the feeling you have when you wake up comfortable and warm. But take that up to infinity and to the depths of unending, and you have only begun to describe that feeling._

_Mother tells you later that this is a mother's love and you begin to want to understand love._

_You do not crave more of it, because you have enough and all you need. You are happy and content, as much as you can be at that age. Mother glows when she is around you. That glows confers warmth a similar warmth. Her presence and her smile, and even her emotions directed at you, all seem to make your heart beat faster. You think you are beginning to understand love._

_You try hard to please Mother, of course._

_She wants to create a world and she covers everything she sees in White Mana. It is a glorious radiance that combines and transcends the five senses the moments she pours the Mana out like water out of a never-ending jar._

_You think that you want to please her. So you create like she does. The first attempts do not go so well. They look like Mother, but they do not act like her. They do not have her warmth and they do not smile like her. They are your children, Mother tells you, but their attempts at emulating her smiles only cause you to cringe. When they try to speak aloud, you only want to remove your sense of sound from existence._

_They are your children though, and Mother tells you that you should have that same mother's love for them. You try, of course. Even when you cannot match Mother's throaty, delightful laughter or her twinkling, dancing eyes, you try._

_But your children are only confused. That relationship between you and they are cold and the opposite of what you wanted. What can you do, but hide your disappointment? Mother does the same with her failures. She hides her failed attempts at creation from her teachers too._

_After all… you are not the first attempt she had at creating children._

_She only smiled and showed you off because you were a success._

_Doubt bites at the edge of your consciousness, but you push it away. Mother seems to forget her failures too. When you mention them again, she looks at you with willful confusion. Then she smiles so, with her eyes squeezed to slits and their edges wrinkled ever so slightly. You want to doubt then, but she pats your finger with her hand._

_It is silly, not just because her palm couldn't even cover your finger nail in its entirety, but you have already forgotten why you were doubtful. Mother forgives your failures, she tells you. Mother does not care if you fail. She will love you all the same, she says with a smile. After all, a mother's love is unconditional._

_Time passes, and the days go by._

_Mother adds more colors to the world, painting it like a cosmic canvas. First she adds the Blues, which calm your soul. But then doubt returns. Why wouldn't it, when you analyze 'love' with logic? Love… is such an illogical thing. It is not logical and it is not rational. But you do not feel fear when you realize that you cannot understand love completely._

_Then Mother adds the Reds, which impassions your soul. But then doubt redoubles. Why wouldn't it, when you cannot tell which emotion is 'love'? You try to push it away—angrily—or stifle it with frustration. There are so many emotions of the spectrum, but at the same time, you do not really feel them all. You are human, after all, you do not have the same organs._

_Are you Mother's failure then? After all, Mother doesn't allow you to freely visit her teachers' world anymore. She hides you at home, giving you menial tasks. Was Mother ashamed of you? Did Mother hate you? _

_Doubt drags your mind down so you try to think of other things._

_Mother creates and creates. She does not stop and it does not soothe your soul. She creates more children and loves them as she does you. But you can see that she looks at them more than you. She cares for them more than she does you. Look at how she dotes upon them!_

_That used to be you, who enjoyed such love! Doubt does not fade._

_When your sisters begin to create again, who are you to not join in? You could show Mother you are better. You still try hard to please Mother, even as your view of the world grows ever more slanted, of course._

_The fiery sister creates dragons that destroy any artifact. So you make artifacts indestructible. Your experience outweighs her and you slaughter her dragons with ease._

_The calm sister creates many crystals into a whole nation-state. So you create fortresses so large, the crystals cannot but help be repulsed. They are burned for fuel to drive your machines._

_You know you cannot kill your sisters. That would upset Mother. You love her still, even as the other four colors of her world dim her light. But what is there to say that you cannot erase their creations from existence. After all, you are more skilled. So skilled that they cannot even know._

_When Mother returns, she sees your skill in creation and she smiles upon you. You feel that love again and you bask in it. But it is no longer enough. You want more._

_Why do you have to share with your sisters what was yours? This is not the order of things. Their arrival has upset this order, you think to yourself. But you get to know them soon._

_Days pass again._

_The more you see your sisters, the less you want them gone. They kindle something in you. It is not Mother's love, of course. They smile at you in a way that is not like your children. They sit at your feet and stare up at you in wonder. Is it not obvious that you would grow fond of them?_

_For a while, you feel sated._

_But is it enough? No, you realize. You want more now. You look into the infinity and see the five colors of Mana swirl around Mother's world. Power gathers where power is. It is just so, since Mother begins to create more and more artifacts. Each is more powerful than the last._

_She secludes herself in the center of her world, where none can enter unless she allows. There, she rumbles and crafts and thinks. She does not smile upon you or grace you with her presence, or even talk to you anymore._

_But you tell yourself that you should endure that wanting. You now share Mother's love with billions of other sisters. And Mother's warmth—a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of it—lingers within each of your minds. You tell yourself that it is enough, because you can hear the echo of her thoughts in all of your sisters._

_Even if you cannot meet her or see her or even be beside her, you tell yourself that everything is as it should be. This is the way Mother intended. Her love is still unconditional and you still have it._

_It is a small spark within your soul. It is a piece of her that you have, which none of your sisters have. _

_It has been your irrefutable proof of Mother's love for you._

_You have thought about all this in great detail. With the amount of power at your disposal, you might have spent a thousand years thinking about Mother and your relationship with her. You want to give her a piece of you in return. To show that you care for her. Would that be a daughter's love? You think, as emotions come and go, that you understand love a little better now than before._

_You think it is something that causes conflict, but the result is always something good. For you, it caused you disgusting internal conflict. But you hope that what you do could show Mother your unconditional love in return. Still, you try your hardest to please her._

_But things spiral out of control._

_As more colors begin to spiral around Mother's world, Mother's light grows dimmer still. Where she used to radiate White Mana, she is now like a rainbow. You cannot control the situation. Only Mother can._

_Yet she decides that your sisters and their daughters are not close enough to what they should be. You agree, to an extent. They are failures. Why else would they be hidden in this world only? They cannot smile like Mother can. They do not have the light that is Mother's alone. Their voices are cold or fiery, never soothing like Mother's. _

_Mother's power washes over you, and you think everything would be better now. For a few seconds, you think that. But then you realize something is wrong._

_Your sisters are hurt by Mother's actions. Their children are distraught and confused. They are in pain and you hear it in your mind and your heart. Even your creations screech in their place._

_And even you feel it. You look down and see that you are partly covered in flesh, underneath the silver plates of your skin. You see blood dripping down your hands. You feel your nerves flare all at once. It is all-consuming. In that moment, you blindly ask aloud, 'What is this?'_

_Your daughter—who you have never thought of truly as a daughter, but a creation to show your superiority to your sisters—closest to you answers automatically with the answer that is drilled into her head. _

"_It is a mother's love."_

_Is she right?_

… A billion voices whimpered and cried at me, even hours afterwards. It was as if they forgot how to think as quickly as they should. Everything was dragging down, but I knew that once they crossed this gap, there would be so many new realms of magic open to us.

"Five colors," I muttered just above the volume of the whining of my daughters. I stood, straight, motionless, staring into the eons. I stood at the center of my realm, where I tied all the greater colors of Mana to the heart of this world. It was where I studied on my own, unhindered by all other things. "Five colors…"

My voice echoed in this hollow shell of crystals. Only silence greeted me.

"There are infinite colors of Mana," I muttered. Realization came to me as quickly as my brutal use of my power. This… intellectus that answered questions as quickly as I figured them out was a limited thing, requiring constant pushing and pulling, as did all means of thought. But what were limits anymore? "But it returns to a point of economics," I mused with tingle of amusement. "Substitutes and margins, allocation of resources."

I did not snort or laugh or indulge in these mindless, inane motions of humor. They were… inefficient. Why should I do so when I had more important things to do?

"Mother?" Order stood at the far end. Her radiance was dimmed by my actions, but her curiosity grew. There, she stood in a single garb. I liked simple. It was efficient and most productive.

The buzzing of a billion voices quieted. She was the only one who still talked to me directly. The others prayed to me as if I were Serra. Even Liberty, Justice, and Serenity. They saw me as what I am. Order saw me as what I was. I am not frustrated with her though. She is my daughter from a certain point of view, and I love her. I love her enough to excuse such thoughts, but love… love is inefficient. It is limited and always changing. What is the eons to a single moment of emotion? Things change and things die. Even love dies eventually. Am I trying to convince myself to let it all go? It will be more efficient if I do…

"What is it?" I asked.

"Selenia brings news," She began to say.

"Selenia always brings news," I replied. It was nothing new. "She is too insecure in her own ability. Tell her to talk to Dawnbringer about her issues." I was more interested in the properties of this 'Purple' Mana I found. Even with all the power in the world, some practical knowledge was irreplaceable.

"She brings news from Serra," Order added.

"Oh?" I paused and noted, "The third time this week."

"Serra is worried," My little girl replied. Mine. _Mine_. Why does she care what Serra thinks?

I closed my eyes and sighed. "I have not visited in too long. A short, cordial visit would do, wouldn't it, Order?"

She stared back at me, unblinkingly.

Once, a long time ago, I would have been unnerved at her dead eyes. But now I knew differently. I tossed my hair and cleaned myself up with a simple application of Blue and White Mana. The lilacs scent was a touch much, but I could still indulge myself with such minor things without affecting my efficiency. "Come then. Let's not keep Selenia… or Serra waiting."

As I turned to leave, I almost did not see the way my youngest flinched at the sound of my voice.

But at least she didn't see mine.


	38. a little something grim comes this way

The transition from one world to another often distorts one's sense of reality for brief, unnoticed moments of time. It is really an arbitrary number, since there is no exact amount of time for one reality to accept something _outside_ _of it_ as a part of it. And the closer in relative distance (even though the outside had no concept of distance) two realities were, the quicker the transition happened. In this sense, the move from my realm to Serra's realm should have been instant.

But it wasn't.

The moment I walked into the clouds of dazzling light and saw her eternal dawn, I felt stifled. Omnipotence was only relative to my own realm, but knowing it and actually experiencing it were two entirely different things.

I still respected and loved Serra the mentor and friend far too much to intrude and do something as crass as impose my reality upon hers. So I let it go, even though I felt like my soul was being choked out of my body. The only human memory I had that was similar to this was in my distant past. When I was eight years old, I sat in a private dinner between business bigwigs, that each smoked a cigar. The smoke from these cancer-sticks filled the room so thoroughly I had tears and very nearly vomited just from five minutes of exposure. I felt the same here, the moment I walked into Serra's Realm.

… Only that it was not the smoke and disgust that was choking me, but a blinding light. My mind and soul shrank into my vessel as the discomfort seemed to grow and struggle against my own restraints. And it was only when I was very nearly resembling that of a human in composition of soul and body that the choking eased.

I turned to Order and looked down at her, at a loss at what just happened.

She sensed my glaze and stared back at me. But I knew and saw that she didn't know what just occurred. None of it was physical, all of the choking was spiritual.

My lips parted, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to. Really, I did want to ask why, but I think… I think I knew why. I just didn't want to think about it.

Instead, I smiled at Selenia, even though it felt so fake and forced. She was picking herself up from the raw travel through the Aether. Angels were so fragile to such pure exposure, but most material things were, if they did not have tolerance to power. "Lady Selenia, why don't you request an audience with Lady Serra on my behalf?"

"You know," she coughed slightly as she righted herself. Why was her smile so much brighter and sincere? "You know that you don't need to do that, Little Lady. Lady Serra loves you so."

"Well, for once, I want to do things 'by the book', so to speak."

Selenia blinked at me queerly. "You were never one for following rules," she said slowly, as if she were treading on thin ice.

I shrugged, but I couldn't bare look at her anymore. Even staring at the eternal sun felt less painful on my eyes.

After a moment of silence, I heard her clothes ruffle slightly as Selenia accepted my reasoning. "I will see to it at once. But perhaps you should just wait outside of the Sanctum? I don't doubt that Lady Serra has been expecting you for a long time coming."

"Fine," I huffed.

"Mother, why do you think Serra wants to meet you?" Order asked softly from behind me, suddenly. This surprised me. She didn't speak up on her own often and she usually chose her words wisely.

I turned over my shoulder and studied her. Very little of her expression had changed, but there was a slight furrow of her brows that cutely accentuated her confusion. I heard her thoughts, as clearly as if she had spoken them: Why has Serra tolerated so much change? What is my purpose here? Why is Mother finally accepting Serra's invitation to visit?

Before I could address her questions, Selenia returned. "Go on in," she said.

"You're not coming?" I asked.

She shook her head. Ah, her gleaming hair was rather pretty. When was the last time I felt those strands between my fingers…? "No, Little Lady. This is your audience."

I bowed slightly. "Alright then."

Serra was radiant as ever. Did I really need to go into describing her? I didn't feel like I needed to, but she was different now than she was before. The robes and peaceful demeanor were both gone, of course. It has been too long and her realm has been on a war-footing for even longer still.

She looked like how I remembered her in my old memories, from the card games. An armor of light wrapped tightly around her, emphasizing an almost avian look to her, with her body being so close to bear. There was not a hint of fat on her in her skin-tight armor, there was only steel-like sinews and iron-hard muscles. Feathers lined her clothes, covering her and concealing her identity ever so slightly, but there was not a single wing at her back. There was something crude and human about her, so different from her Serra Angels, who were like distilled light and goodness in comparison.

When she saw my entrance, her smile dazzled me more so than Selenia's countenance. I did turn away, but I didn't know why my eyes were wet. I blinked the feeling away quickly. There was no need for such inefficient things here.

"Ah, my dear student!" She wrapped her feather-armored arms around me and rested her chin upon my head. One hand came up to rub my head while she sighed, "It has been so long. I have missed you dearly."

I squirmed. I wanted to say that I am a nigh-omnipotent super-being! I wanted to growl about how I will not be treated in such a way. But instead of that, I pouted and crossed my arms and turned away from Serra's light. Not that it stopped from her from continuing to giggle at me though.

Damn it.

"So, why have you come, my little lady?"

"Because… because you asked me to?" I didn't really know. I was still disoriented by my sudden lack of… well, the sudden restrictions upon my power. I nudged them slightly, and felt the discomfort return.

At the same moment, Serra grimaced, as if in pain.

"Are you alright?" I asked. She did not take the path I did. It was irrational of me, perhaps, but I didn't like her being in pain.

The smile returned to Serra's face briefly, but it didn't seem to belong there. There was something almost like plastic about it that caused my heart to plummet. Then she shook her head and her hood hid her eyes from my view. "I am fine," She muttered tiredly. "I am more concerned about you. When was the last time you've had social contact?"

"Human contact?" I shrugged. "Not a few moments ago? My children are human enough now."

"That is not the same," Serra lectured softly. "My angels can pass as humans just as easily, but they are not. Even if they had all the spectrum of emotions as my followers, they are still my children."

"But that's the same thing," I replied. I loved her dearly, but I couldn't help but become defensive about my creations. "And what's wrong with my children then?"

Serra shook her head. The feathers that wrapped tightly around her limbs looked almost like light at this angle, and when she swayed, they blurred like the rays of the sun. "Nothing is wrong with them. But they are your children and your followers. They will not question you, especially when they are so… young."

"They are mature. And they think for themselves!" I was growing agitated. This was not a conversation I had imagined myself having with Serra, ever. She surrounded herself with her creations, so what's wrong with me doing the same? I turned to Order, who stood awkwardly at the edge of the Sanctum. "Order, come here and tell Lady Serra how you think for yourself."

"But I…" I don't want to get into this argument. You shouldn't have this argument. Mother, please calm down.

But that was the last thing I wanted to hear from Order, even if it was in her mind. With such power at my fingertips, what I wanted and willed simply was. I didn't like not getting what I wanted. It was a reasonable request, wasn't it? Why didn't she want to defend herself and show her independence? I felt my teeth gnash, something that I haven't done since I began my solitary studies within my world.

"You do not have to, I understand they have their own thoughts," Serra interjected quickly. "But then what have you been up to, my student? It has been a long time since I have had the opportunity to look into your advances. And a teacher will always have an interest in her apprentice."

"I…" I couldn't tell her exactly what I have been doing, could I? Delving into the mechanics of artifacts was innocent enough, but I have been exploring all the aspects of the other major Colors of Mana. I turned my glaze to my feet. "I have been exploring the mysteries of the Aether."

Serra tilted her head in question. "What sorts of mysteries? Have you advanced in the healing arts?"

"Oh… this and that… you know," I muttered. "I've a few new things to add to healing, yeah." Mainly by creation and mutation through Green and Blue Mana. White Mana was… stagnant and slow compared to those two others.

"I'm not sure, little lady," Serra giggled like soft wind chimes. "I do not really know what you have been doing, and you know I cannot look directly into your world, just as you cannot simply look into mine."

I shuffled my feet nervously and looked back at Order again. "Order, why don't you explain what you have been doing to Lady Serra?"

"But Mother, that is not the same thing as what you have been doing…"

I almost growled at her.

"Ah," Serra clapped her hands. "But now the mysterious studies of my student have become even more mysterious! I hope you didn't cause another disaster!" Serra japed gently.

"No, I… I was just learning more about magic and stuff."

Serra seemed to frown. "Nothing dangerous, I hope? You should remember your lessons, my little lady. The costs of greater magic have… more dire consequences."

"I'm fine."

She didn't seem convinced, but she didn't push it either. Instead, she pulled away and looked awfully sad. "You do not look fine to me. There is an air about you that is difference from before. It darkens the land you stand upon more than you presence brings light."

"Well," I shrugged. "I'll get rid of it."

Serra's frown deepened. "Such things do not just go away, Little Lady. You are taking light what could be—"

"I'll be fine!" I interrupted and the world shook.

Wait.

I didn't do that. I had such tight control of my power, I couldn't just do that. But the world screamed and ripped apart, as if it was a bandage that had its individual fibers utterly burned. I felt as if the world was a looking glass that had just shattered and kept shattering and shattering.

Both Serra and I feel to our knees as _reality itself_ seemed to quake at a coming wave of energy so vast…

The sky darkened and the sun was blotted out by a million black stars. The oily, oozing corruption of Black Mana seeped out of the black sun, as if it was a hole in the sky that had started bleeding dark ichor.

I came to moments after Serra, who evidentially had more experience on such matters than I.

Denial grasped my ankles and I felt my mind being dragged down by doubt. It couldn't be… It shouldn't be… We had time, more than a year… why…

The sky seemed to shatter, and I realized that the darkness above us was not a composition of pure magic. Looking closer, I realized that it was material shifting through the Aether, through a thousand dimensional portals crafted into one giant monstrosity—

—Phyrexia had come, and it had come with a flair for theatrics. The darkness to come had arrived early in the form of a floating continent, farm larger than the size of even the totality of the angelic lands within Serra's Realm. The sound of crashing and shattering continued, growing louder and louder. When my eye turned to the all surrounding sounds, I nearly felt my mind shatter along with it all. It was not any material thing breaking, however. It was the sound of Serra's Ban, the code written into this reality and the enchantment _and_ Serra's all-encompassing consciousness breaking apart—

I felt hands grip my shoulders tightly. My body was on the cold, unforgiving marble; I had crumbled there like a puppet whose strings have been cut. My hands felt sticky, but it was just the blood that had rolled out of my eyes splattering over my fingers.

Serra shook me again and again, distress clear in her eyes. But there was also caring and concern… for me. Why? She spoke over the screaming, "You're going to be alright, Little Lady. My magic will heal you. Please. Don't lose yourself. Not now."

But the world that is hers has been wretched out of her hands. Black Mana seeped into everything, overwriting even the basic concept of light that was written into this reality—

A blast of light at the end of the tunnel of darkness shook me, like electricity going through my veins. My mind righted itself into place. My soul was barely confined.

And only then did I realize that it was I who was screaming.


	39. a girl arrives at a twisted realization

Darkness falls and the world shrieks. I look into the void, a shiver runs down my spine, and I turn sideways to face Serra. I know what pains her. The taint, the ever-spreading darkness, bites at her with the force of a million, million wasps, covering everything that is Serra's Realm and eating away at the sunlight and White Mana as quickly as frenzied piranhas.

Serra grasps my hand. She looks up at me pleadingly…

I realize I am trying to fly up, to fight and command. Bright, red blood still trickles down my cheeks and I stifle an annoyed huff. "You can't stop me, Serra." I say eventually as the world falls to ruin around us. The world is ending, and I must stop it.

I am a streak of light through the darkened sky.

I am a comet burning a trail through the blackness.

I am a second sun that glows through the fog.

And I am not alone. As quickly as twinkling stars appear as night falls, a thousand, thousand angels pierce the blackness around me. I cannot help but be awed by their individual splendor. With coronas of light, they are each a reflection of the woman I admire so much and yet they are all unique and something more.

I see my influences upon them. There are swords with a hundred gears, twisting into weapons of unimaginable cruelty against evil. There are spears that leave a plume of white ash as they drill and pierce through the dark heavens. There are shields that burn with the fury of exploding suns. All this and more are arrayed before me, and I find myself shocked for once in a long, long time.

A finger reaches up and wipes away my bloody tears. Order is by my side, dutifully and silently. She looks up at me for direction, but I can see as clear as day that every fiber of her being is intrigued by the battles fought miles and miles above us.

It is hard to imagine such a battle. It is not a single fight, but a thousand battles spread out across a continent the size of the United States—in essence, it is a war bottled up into a single moment. There is so much to perceive, so much to understand, I flounder once again and I falter from rising higher.

The reason is two-fold. First, I am holding myself back; a sentimental part of me wonders if I am the cause of this. Hundreds of angels are dying each moment. The rends within reality—the black tracks that give this Dark Continent power to plow through the Aether—are present _only because I brought them here_. Is this my butterfly? The wings that I have flapped has caused this? I want nothing more than to fall… fall, puke my guts out and splatter like an insignificant ant.

Let me step back for a second. My culture and the society I grew up in has conditioned me to be desensitized to violence. I might even thrive in it. But there is a vast difference between being a soldier and a Planeswalker of nigh-infinite power… with the ability to perceive all of the battles at once. One can be experiencing the hopelessness of lying in a wet, muddy ditch surrounded by explosions, with the world darkening into greyscale around them. Or they can be exploring the tropic jungles and hearing the thunder of artillery and napalm roar beside them. They can be in the sands of an unknowledgeable land, fighting a crusade not their own, for the redemption of a lord who worships something that may or may not exist. They can be doing all that and more, and come out with the trauma of a war.

But now think of a continent filled with the well-oiled black mechanisms of death. They are a hundred million or more, so much that they are a machine-jungle fueled by the souls and blood and flesh of those too weak to survive. Think of that continent crashing down upon another world, upon all of its civilians. Its creator is valiantly trying to hold the monstrosity of a landmass up and away from crushing her creations, but it up to her followers to fight off the hundred million monsters that come like a black tide.

Zoom out and see the situation from all angles, see all the horror that these beings—from massive, oily constructs of dragon engines to the smallest swarm of sentient, blood sucking insects—promise. See all the twisted conflicts happening, each more frightening than the last. Each one is different, but for every wound in the world that a Serra Angel cleanses, ten more will rise up to pull her down. They will claw at her, their hooked talons rip and chain her wings until they have lost their feathers and are nothing but bony, hideous parodies of their former selves. Look at the black ichor that falls from the black mass, like a sapient mass of corruption and pollution, drawing upon Serra's Realm for its own sustenance. It is my fault. I brought the power to this realm, for it to be able to do this. Each drop encases the light, trapping the very concept of dawn in dark ambers that will see nothing but night ever again. They trap the valiant angels like tar pits, sinking good and kindness deeper into their depths like quick sand. So many…

So many…

So… many…

The trails of blood resume rolling down my cheeks. I don't think I'll ever be without regret again. My hands fall at my sides, useless. I have so much power, but what can I do? Destroy everything?

I want to pry each angel away, and then wipe out all of the life that battles above me. It is genocide of a monstrous kind, and it is not against my morals, I hope. But there comes my second reason why I falter.

Something impedes me.

My power bubbles beneath a thin veneer; very little can stop such an explosive force. Urza Planeswalker can. Yawgmoth probably can. Serra…

I swerve down and stare in open betrayal at the tiny speck below me. She is so far away, but I can see every fragment, every cell, and every atom of her being. It is not her. It can't. But who? _Who else could stop me from acting?_ I cry in disgusting frustration with my mind. Nothing should be able to hold me back!

Nothing, but the Ban remains! I turn to Serra and see her on her knees, putting all her power into trying to reject the reality that is. I shake my head in pity.

It is too late. Phyrexia is here and I cannot stop it.

_Why are you trying so hard, Serra?_ I want to scream, but I can barely move. _Can't you see that you have lost control of your own restriction on the darkness? On Black Mana? And where is the greatest concentration of Black Mana on this Plane?_ Even with such a powerful force, of millions and millions, perhaps half of the first few layers of the entire plane of Phyrexia, the sole and greatest power is still with the single being who is the closest to infinity.

My body is slowed and so is my mind. It just takes some moments to catch up.

The thoughts filtering into my head are quieter than before, but they should still hold volume. Yet now they are silent. Not a single one of my creations spoke. I look down again, twisting my neck painfully to stare at the blonde tuff of hair that is Order. She can speak, but she chooses not to. _So where are my daughters…?_

Seeing that I cannot find the answer by looking down, I stare up, turning my attention away from the battle for the first time since its arrival. My gaze shoots past the impenetrable barrier of hatred incarnate and I see…

I see a hole in the world, a wound unhealable. It is a door to nothingness the size of a moon, where my realm once resided. The crack of power that has thrown a chunk of evil into Serra's Realm has done more than simply throw a new player into the game; it has shifted the planes out of order—it has thrown my world into the Aether. I cannot see into the Infinity, but I know what happens to everything that enters unprotected. I know, I know, **I KNOW**!

Realization comes slow at times, but this is not one of them. It hits me like a freight train, and I turn to hit reality back for every ounce of hurt and every part of me that understands what happened.

My lips parted, and I screamed a song of death for the whole world to hear. The very stuffs of composition shatter around me and it matters not who, because everyone falls as my eyes lay upon them. The blood stops; I have no tears left. There is only understanding. Anger comes and goes, as does regret and hatred and fear, but all that is left, after an eon is fitted into a droplet of a second, is the desire for all the join the fates of the lost. It is all still there. Rage finally boils to the point of explosion. Hatred poisons all until none is left standing. Lamentation wilts all other forms of will. Fear devours every other thought. Loss…

_I never even heard their final whispers before they died…_

"Enough," A thousand voices of the dead echo through my lips leaving reality trembling as I make my desires known. Grief over takes me, planting a million seeds within my soul as everything seems to twist and distort even as my eyes open up to the new reality of the world. "Everything… Everyone dies."

Far, far below, a single whimper goes out like a candle in a storm. It is just a whisper, "Don't lose yourself, not now..."

...

And it is left unheard.


	40. a girl reaches breaking point

The first things to shatter are the simple, material stuffs around me. Angels and demons both cry in unison—with the same vibrato and pitch—as they are sheered, one atom at a time. I do not care: the mass of multicolored, kaleidoscopic energy bursts from my being. The first things to go is the light around me, then the air and the debris, all banished into the oblivion that my creations are consigned to. In their place is a vast emptiness, a vacuum that nothing escapes from.

No life, no Mana, no power or being or rules of reality can escape this encompassing banishment. It leaks from my skin like an inky blackness that blots out the sun and stars.

This same emptiness is a reflection of my heart, and it is an eternity fitted into a moment with every form and no form at all. It is everything in between and empowered only by my will. This… crawling chaos does not grasp at things. It does not reach for them or beckon, for it moves without moving. It is merely my messenger, a messenger of infinite, horrific forms for the song that I sing for annihilation. And what is reality to that which does not obey its rules? Shatter…

Shatter…

_Shatter!_

I hiss in rage, spittle flying only as a byproduct of my idle thoughts at the edge of my mind. A part of me distracts and wanders what my mind—my will and my soul—even are anymore? It is not an answer I can fathom, and the simple truth is something entirely ordinary.

I do not care. I don't care for the consequences. No, screw the consequences! Damn everything…

A dragon engine roars. It is a monstrosity of impossible dimensions, further twisting and turning as this plane is undone by my presence. Its still-functioning, primal mind is further breaking as it turns its eyes towards me. The controlling mechanism—something shadowy with a million puppet-strings—screeches in pain and pulls away.

Black fires spew out of the machine beast, burning without fuel and eating away whatever it touches. Its claws—each large enough to skewer a modern battleship—slash towards me at subsonic speeds. Black magic drips from its cogitators and even fouler oils drip from its gears. On its maw is the blood of tens of angels.

And it dies screaming in such horror that its mind should not even be capable of comprehending as it is erased, consigned to oblivion.

A valiant angel, covered in accolades sees me too. She raises a sword of flames and screams a battle cry unheard as sound is banished into the Aether. There are ten thousand, nine hundred and forty-two feathers on her four wings. They are dim though they once glowed with otherworldly splendor. Now they are ashes. Now they are dust.

And now she suffers, but only for a moment. Then she is no more.

But why should Phyrexia stop suffering? It only seeks to bring such sorrows to others. My sight wheels about as the consciousness that wills into being is changed. It turns and grows and changes until something new is in its place… a place of infinite sorrow and hatred. It is a place within myself devoted to the suffering of evil by evils they inflict.

The magic is complex. First a ring of power surges out, encasing everything that invades this sanctuary of dawn and dusk. Then another, and another, they come and come until a sphere of nigh-infinite circles of magic and runic signs form and trap the black continent within.

There are angels within here… but they are an acceptable loss. There are demons within, millions and millions of sentient and sapient beings. A part of me screams in horror; it is genocide of entire species—is genocide evil, if it is genocide of evil?

But it matters not. I do not care… right?

Besides, it is ultimately me who suffers the most. Besides, they are not truly dead, this way. I will not force this upon anyone else—they will suffer within me, and I will experience each moment, from every angle, with them. In a way, this stops me.

It fills a hole within my soul that appeared the moment the hole in Serra's Realm had become apparent.

But it does not make me whole…

… And no material form is made to hold such a thing. Perhaps, within decades, if not centuries, of research, I can do it. But I cannot not now.

It is foolish of me—

Someone screams at me, but I cannot hear. I see my last creation, little Order, fall prey to my wrath and I pause. Multicolored cracks form on my skin and I begin to see what I have done, but it is too late. It is all happening too fast, and why am I suddenly too slow, too weak? And my form breaks, just as I realize what is happening…


	41. an epilogue

I blink.

I am not dead?

There is a tint on the world, as if only certain things fit my view, but I am alive… and so are four other versions of me. I see it now and understand, even as they all seem to move too fast for me to comprehend.

One is White. She holds the crux of my vast powers. Within her heart is the Mox Lotus, the pinnacle of my creations, my Opus. Light wavers and flutters out from her like a hundred tendrils of ethereal tentacles—massive wings of unearthly light. But for all that she is, she is marred with a fierce scowl, facing another version of myself.

The other is Black. She who contains a million of a million souls or perhaps more, uncountable. They all suffer within her and their primal, guttural urges and emotions filter out of her like a black miasma of hate and terror and destruction. Permanent streaks of black run down her cheeks, like great rivers of tears, though an ugly grin seems to be always plastered on her face. She cackles with selfish insanity, and I see that the mark of Phyrexia on the center of her forehead, like a beacon of evil, beckoning me to shy away.

I do, and I see two others, too weak to move, but stronger than I.

One is Red; fiery and on fire. Her pupils are black coals and her skin is fire itself. She circles around the dueling pair, staring off with another that is more of her equal. They both hold a number of Lands of Power, unlike me. But she holds the fires of chaos and wanton annihilation. She also seems to hate herself for all the poor decisions she has made. And that hatred has passed on to another.

That another is Blue. She is calm and seems to be an island in a sea of time and space, isolated from everything else. But her eyes are calculating and she bares equal ill will towards the Red. She despises herself too, but in different ways and means. She thinks that she should not have existence in the first place. She thinks that each shard of us should crease to be.

And the last is I, but what I am? I am nothing. I have nothing, but that lends me a unique perspective.

Because only I see what I have wrought. I see Order suspended in the air, on the brink of death. I see the slaughter I have inflicted. I see all the deaths I have caused. And only I seem to be mourning.

And that is why I did nothing when I saw Serra banish us to that same oblivion of the Aether, locking us from ever causing any more destruction again. I only wish I had the opportunity to take a moment and whisper an apology to her ears.

But perhaps I did not deserve such a chance…


End file.
